


The Wars of Legends - Sidestories

by Dock872210



Series: The Wars of Legends [6]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Blood+ (Anime & Manga), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Stargate - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Drama, F/F, F/M, Family, Female Harry Potter, Friendship, Genderbending, Lesbian Character, Mainly set in Stargateverse, Romance, Sibling Incest, Sister-Sister Relationship, Sister/Sister Incest, Slice of Life, Space Battles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2020-09-30 13:01:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 43,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20447555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dock872210/pseuds/Dock872210
Summary: A collection of one-shots and multi-chapter short stories set in the Wars of Legends universe that did not warrant a separate book.





	1. Reconciliation

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Reconciliation**

**One-shot**

**Beta: **

* * *

It was late at night in Oxford as Hermione stood at the bus stop waiting for the bus to take her back to her flat after the graduation ceremony for her Ph.D in astrophysics. She should probably have been celebrating her accomplishment as a number of her peers were, but the young woman simply could not bring herself to do so.

Looking at her scroll, all she could think about was what she should study next.

_What would impress Harry? What would get her notice?_

That had been her raison d'être for years now.

After her disastrous last meeting with her old friend, she'd come to deeply regret her actions and had sought to apologize but she didn't know how to contact her. She refused to beg Ron for help, even though he was still on cordial terms with Harry. Her accursed pride wouldn't allow it.

No, she would prove herself as someone of note to Harry and then when she was forced to acknowledge her she'd apologize. It was this rather warped, and even she could admit that, way of thinking that helped her get up in the morning. It was what had kept her going over the years. It had become her everything.

_I'm a wreck._ The bushy haired woman thought with a self-deprecating chuckle. _But I _will _make things right with Harry._

"Dr. Granger," a incredibly alluring voice called out to her all of the sudden.

Stealthily sliding her wand into her hand, she turned to see who had addressed her and was left speechless to find the Chiropteran Swarm Queen Diva looking at her with a sultry smile on her face.

Hermione was firmly heterosexual, barring a brief experiment back in Hogwarts, but even she felt a stirring in her loins at the inhuman attractiveness of the Chiropteran sovereign. Thus she could be forgiven as she jumped to her feet and offered the alien queen a stilted curtsy.

"Y-Your Majesty," the witch stuttered out.

Diva seemed amused by her discomfort if the playful glint in her eyes and her smirk was anything but she said nothing just eyed Hermione up in a way that made the witch's skin flush.

"W-What can I do for you?" Hermione said when the Chiropteran's examination finally got too much.

This seemed to be, somehow, exactly the kind of reaction that Diva was looking for and her smile grew predatory.

_Should I fight back if the Chiropteran attacks? _Hermione thought as her grip tightened on her wand. _Harry would expect me to defend myself, but the Swarm Queens are supposed to be some of her best friends. Oh, Harry, what should I do?_

"You've impressed me you know, Dr, Granger." Diva said at last, though she continued stalking around Hermione and looking her up and down like some museum exhibit. "Not only did you graduate at the top of your class at Hogwarts, you also went out to get a diploma in magical engineering, degrees in engineering and astronomy and now a Ph.D in astrophysics."

So her efforts had been recognized after all. Just not by the person she wanted.

_But if I play my cards right…_

"Thank you, your Majesty." Hermione replied. "But may I ask why that warranted you to visit me in person?"

Diva's smile somehow, don't ask her how, grew even _more _predatory.

"I don't like to beat around the bush, so I'll just be up front. I'm in the market for a new Chevalier and you, Dr. Granger, are the leading candidate."

Hermione's eyes widened at that.

_I can work with this._

* * *

A day later, found Saya sitting beside her twin and across from the rather fetching Dr. Hermione Granger in the Le Jules Verne restaurant inside the Eiffel Tower. They were alone, having booked the entire venue, save for its staff and their own security detail, notably including Haji and Lucille who were at the bar having drinks and chatting softly. It was thus quite the intimate setting.

"This is where Nimue took Ganos to celebrate our victory over the Ori," Diva was busy explaining to their guest. "Though they were probably celebrating the fact that the victory meant they could properly be together at last."

Diva's explanation caused the genius witch to look around the room with reverence, something that brought a pleased smile to the blue Queen's face.

Saya shook her head at her antics. This was supposed to be part of Diva's charm offensive to convince Dr. Granger to become her Chevalier, but it was clear that particular plan was no longer part of the agenda. Diva hadn't come out and say it yet, but after hearing Hermione's story she at least had given up any ambitions of adding her to the Swarm.

The brilliant young woman's desperate drive to succeed in life simply to attract the attention of the friend she'd spurned in a fit of childish pique in her youth so that she could apologize had moved her. That and the fact that said old friend was Nimue.

Saya counted Nimue as one of her closest friends, and she felt obliged to help her heal this rift between her and her childhood friend if possible

_I agree. _Diva sent, having read the direction of Saya's thoughts.

_You've given up on making her your Chevalier? _

_Yup. _Diva replied, childishly popping the 'p', _She'd never agree anyways. Her first loyalty, even now, is to Nimue. She'd never serve anyone else willingly._

_That's an impressive devotion._

_She's an impressive person_

_True. _Saya agreed. _Then can I get Lucille to go collect the present I had prepared?_

_Go ahead. _Diva replied, giddy with anticipation.

_Lucille? _Saya prompted her Chevalier.

_On the way! _The former witch replied even as she blurred out of the restaurant.

"So Dr. Granger, mind telling me what is it that you want most of all?" Diva asked the young woman as she finished her visual survey of the restaurant.

"To have the chance to meet Nimue again and apologize," Hermione replied without hesitation.

"And what would you be willing to give to do that?"

"Almost anything," the bushy haired woman admitted. "But I won't become your Chevalier."

_Told you so! _Diva crowed.

Saya just mentally rolled her eyes. _It was never in doubt._

Her sister sent a mental pout in reply.

"Oh, I know that," Diva said verbally, without giving any hint to their telepathic byplay. "But what _else _would you be willing to do?"

"Like I said, almost anything," Hermione replied, her eyes glowing with honest determination.

"You really shouldn't make such sweeping statements," Saya warned the human.

"I know," Hermione agreed. "But I'm being honest. I'd do practically anything to see Nimue again."

Saya nodded, satisfied that the woman understood what she was saying.

_Lucille? Are you back yet? _

_Right here, Saya. _Her Chevalier said as she walked over to the table and handed her an envelope, earning herself a grateful smile in the process, before retreating back to the bar.

"What's that?" Hermione asked curiously.

_Diva, if you'd do the honors._

_Of course, sister._

"The Swarm will be sponsoring you on a trip to Hogwarts as part of a diplomatic delegation to meet with Nimue." Diva said, catching the witch's attention.

"W-Why?" Hermione gasped in shock. "Why would you do that?"

"Nimue is our friend too," Saya explained with a smile. "Letting you and her, two estranged friends, a chance to reconcile is just us being good friends to both of you."

"Thank you," the witch said, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Thank you so very, very much!"

Diva stood and pulled the crying girl into a hug. "This is the least we can do for our friends."

Saya stood as well and walking over to the still seated Hermione, squatted so she could look the other woman in the eyes and handed the envelope over.

"This contains all the information and documentation you'll need."

Hermione reverently took the envelope and clutched it to her breast like it was the most precious thing in the world to her even as her she burst into sobs.

Diva tucked her into her side.

_She feels so good. _Diva mused, wistfully.

Saya shook her head in exasperation. _Don't be greedy._

* * *

It was a beautiful day on Hogwarts when Nimue found herself sitting on her throne in the throne room of the Water Palace as she awaited a diplomatic delegation from the Chiropteran Swarm to be formally introduced to her and her court.

She was frankly a little confused why Saya and Diva were going through such formal channels. Surely if they had something to tell her or business to conduct then they could either just speak to her on the Ascended Plane or hail her over subspace. Even more puzzling, they'd even felt the need to insist on the full formal introduction before the court for this delegation but yet also demand that the whole thing not be recorded.

_Was this some set up for a prank? _The Ascended Goa'uld mused as she impatiently waited for the delegation. If it was than it was something of Diva's devising. Saya simply had no head for such things, though could be convinced into it. Diva could be _very _convincing when she put her mind to it, especially at persuading Saya.

"The diplomatic delegation from the Chiropteran Swarm," the court herald announced at last, cutting her musings short.

_Guess I'll find out what's going on soon enough._

Watching lazily as the delegation filed in with its leader, a Vizier, at its head, Nimue still had no clue what her friends were up to. That is, until she saw someone in the small procession of diplomats that decidedly didn't belong.

_Granger!?_

The sight of the witch had her immediately jumping to her feet, static sparking off her frame as she glared down at the bushy haired young woman who was looking at her apologetically from amid the ranks of Chiropterans.

"Nimue?" Ganos asked urgently as she hurried to her side. "What's wrong?"

"_That woman_," Nimue hissed, pointing to Granger. "Was this whole farce just to bring _her _to meet me?"

Unfazed by her anger, the Vizier bowed apologetically.

"It is, your Majesty." He informed her dutifully.

This just further stoked her anger, as the tips of her hair began turning into lightning.

_What the hell!? Saya, Diva, what the hell are you thinking!?_

"Nim," Ganos said soothingly as she turned back to her from ordering the naturally alarmed guards to hold their positions. "You need to calm down."

Completely unruffled by the tense situation, the Vizier continued with his explanation.

"My Queens wish to grant Your Majesty the chance to close this festering wound in the relationship between Your Majesty and this young lady." He said gesturing between Nimue and Hermione. "For good or ill."

Nimue was still upset at being played but she could see the reason in her friends' actions.

Sweeping down the steps of her dais, Ganos following closely behind her, she marched to one of the side doors leading out of the throne room. As she was about to step out, she turned to the witch that was the source of her distress.

"Meet me in the Paradiso sitting room in an hour," she ordered through gritted teeth. "The guards will show you the way."

* * *

The specified hour later, Ganos found herself seated between her wife Vivian and her spouse's estranged old friend Hermione.

Despite her obvious anger, it seemed Vivian was as far sighted as always. Her choice of venue for this inevitably tense discussion was inspired. The Paradiso sitting room was arguably one of the most calming places in the whole palace. With its many trickling waterfalls and fountains creating a calming background noise that was accentuated by the tasteful selection of decorative plants, this room's soothing atmosphere would be incredibly helpful for the tense conversation that she was sure was about to take place.

At least it should, unfortunately it seemed to not have been enough and the three of them had been sitting in uneasy silence for over a minute with no sign that things were getting any better.

"You obviously have something important to tell me," Vivian barked at Hermione at long last. "You _did _go as far as to curry favor with the Swarm to get the chance. So just spit it out!"

Ganos put a hand on her wife's arm and gave it a comforting squeeze, hoping that it calmed her down somewhat.

_Tone it down, Viv. _Ganos sent her wife telepathically. _You're not angry at the girl, you're-_

_I _am _angry at Hermione. _Vivian corrected her forcefully.

Ganos could only blink in confusion at that. Was she reading the whole thing wrong?

Not privy to the couple's telepathic conversation, Hermione took a deep breath and nodded to herself before complying with Vivian's request.

"I wanted to apologize," the witch said while bowing her head low. "I was a childish bint all those years ago and I'm sorry."

Vivian was stone faced.

_Viv, why _are _you angry with this girl?_

Her wife didn't reply, just kept glaring at her childhood friend.

"It isn't an excuse," Hermione continued after gulping nervously. "But back then I saw your decision to distance yourself from me and Ron as a betrayal. It reminded me of all the times in Primary School where people would befriend me just to exploit me and then betray me once it was convenient for them to do so. It was a stupid, childish reaction. Again, it isn't an excuse but that's how I felt at the time."

"You're right," Vivian said with a nod. "It _was _a childish reaction. You were doing exactly what you were reacting against. You were rejecting me just because I didn't want to be your friend in the way _you _wanted. That's not how friends treat each other. Friends accept each other, not try to force what they want on each other."

Ganos nodded in agreement and understanding.

She could see why her wife was upset now. Vivian had few friends and the betrayal of one would have hurt her immensely.

"I realized that after the fact." Hermione agreed with a nod. "My foolish actions back then has haunted me ever since, becoming what defined my life. Getting this chance to apologize to you became my life goal. So again, I'm sorry."

Vivian looked at the witch with cool consideration.

Ganos sighed. She could see through her spouse's front and knew full well that her mind was a tumult of emotions.

_Must she always try so hard to act cool?_

Exasperated, the Lantean woman nudged her wife.

Vivian shot her a look and Ganos nodded towards a contrite Hermione.

For a long moment Vivian hesitated, but ultimately her innate aversion to seeing her loved ones hurt won out over her anger.

"I accept your apology," Vivian offered with a sigh.

Ganos smiled in satisfaction.

"T-Thank you," Hermione said, bursting into tears. "This m-means the world to me."

Vivian froze for a moment but quickly shook off whatever was holding her back and stood up, quickly pulling the younger woman into a hug and pat her on the back.

"Don't call me that," she told the crying woman soothingly.

Hermione, with tears still streaming down her face, turned to look at her in confusion.

"Vivian," Vivian told her friend. "In private, my friends call me Vivian."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> There you have it folks, the tying up of the loose end that is Hermione's relationship with Nimue/Vivian. Hope you guys liked it.
> 
> There are a few more loose ends I'd like to tie up so look forward to more of these sidestories in the future. Till then, adieu.


	2. Imperial Intelligence Agency Person of Interest Profile #16118431

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Imperial Intelligence Agency Person of Interest Profile #16118431**

**One-shot**

**Beta: **

* * *

**Imperial Intelligence Agency Person of Interest Profile #16118431**

**Name:** Hermione Jean Granger

**Species:** Homo Magi

**Sex:** Female

**Nationality:** Albionian Citizen

**Date of Birth:** 19 September, 1989

**Physical appearance [expand]**

**Biography [expand]**

**Personality and traits [expand]**

**Abilities and skills [expand]**

**Relationships [contract]**

**Family [expand]**

**Friends [expand]**

**Her Majesty, Mother Empress Nimue [contract]**

Miss Granger is considered to be staunchly loyal towards Her Majesty. She has exhibited such loyalty since their mutual childhood when they attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry together. For more details refer to the information included under the biography tab in this profile.

Despite some time when there was considerable cooling between Her Majesty and Miss Granger, the two have since reconciled and the loyalty that characterized their relationship has once again reasserted itself. In reflection of this, she is considered by Her Majesty as one of her closest confidants.

Her loyalty to Her Majesty is not to be questioned and any who do so are liable to face Her Majesty's wrath.

**Her Highness, Princess Consort Ganos Lal [expand]**

**The Galacticpolitics Blog [contract]**

Miss Granger is the author of the well known blog covering the galactic political situation. So far, she has managed to offer great insight on the topics she covers (to the point where her blog is considered an invaluable intelligence resource by many foreign intelligence agencies) while still maintaining secrecy with sensitive material she has been provided by Her Majesty and other sources.

The standing orders to assist her in the formulation of her posts of her blog is to be strictly followed, this includes vetting her material to ensure compliance to secrecy laws and, if need be, operational security.

On another note, all personnel are strongly encouraged to follow her blog and use it as a tool (in addition to traditional news sources) to maintain their understanding of galactic events and players.


	3. The Grand Aviary of Londinium

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: The Grand Aviary of Londinium**

**One-shot**

**Beta: **

* * *

On the grounds of the opulent New Water Palace on Londinium, a recent new addition was built to serve as the residence of an august member of the Imperial household, the Mother Empress Nimue's oldest friend. This took the form of a massive glass dome attached to the main palace, the Grand Aviary of Londinium.

Within this single massive conservatory was a carefully controlled temperate biome, one specifically tailored to the preferences of its most important occupant: the Mother Empress' familiar, the snowy owl Hedwig.

Though visitors would never have guessed that Hedwig was just a snowy owl. Ever since rejoining with her human, Hedwig had changed. Her plumage was still mainly white, but now it was streaked with lightning. Electricity now coursed through her very being. Like her human, she was now a living storm.

Something that made hunting the many lemmings and other prey that had been introduced into her new home easy, as evidenced by her sweeping down on a pack of the rodents fleeing through the long grass of the meadow at the heart of the glass dome. With a bark, she unleashed a bolt of lightning and cooked the lead mouse.

_Not enough. _Hedwig thought as she veered towards another lemming. This time though she decided that she would catch it the old fashioned way.

Diving down from on high, she sunk her talons into the struggling prey and used her weight to push it to the ground. Digging her claws into its throat and finishing the animal off, she dipped down and swallowed her meal whole. Finishing this meal, she hopped back towards her first kill and swallowed it too.

_Hmm… Cooking the meat does change the flavor quite a bit. Different but still delicious._

"Hedwig!" The voice of her human's mate called from the edge of the dome.

Reacting immediately, Hedwig zipped through the air like a lightning bolt and perched herself on the human woman's raised arm.

Her Vivian's mate was a pretty woman, for a human, but Hedwig, and she was sure her human as well, liked her for more than just that. The woman, Ganos, was matronly, always looking after Hedwig's human and the rest of their family. Something that her trouble prone human sorely needed.

Ganos was smiling at her in amusement and running her free hand through Hedwig's feathers. As pleasant as that was, Hedwig was getting impatient and so hooted at the woman questioningly.

"Ah, sorry." The human apologized. "I got caught up in admiring how beautiful you are."

Hedwig puffed up pridefully at the well-deserved praise. She was absolutely perfect.

Ganos chuckled at her response, which Hedwig allowed. Even she could acknowledge that she was overly prideful at times and that her displays of such came across as humorous more often than not.

"So Hedwig," the woman said after she stopped laughing. "The whole family's on Londinium today, so I'm thinking of organizing something special. You want to join in?"

Hedwig shot her at an unimpressed stare.

_Did she need to ask?_

* * *

Hours later, by the small river that flowed through the center of the Grand Aviary, Vivian lay down with her head in Ganos' lap as she watched their family enjoy a picnic.

"This was a great idea, love." The Mother Empress told her consort. "Thanks for organizing it."

Hedwig hooted from her perch on a nearby rock and Vivian turned to offer her familiar a smile.

"You too Hedwig."

The proud owl gave an indulgent bob of her head, garnering giggles from both Vivian and her wife.

"Sirius Black!" Eldarose howled as she pressed down the skirts of her Victorian gown that had been hiked up by a black dog running under them even as the culprit raced away.

Vivian smirked in amusement as her daughter picked up her skirt and chased after her godfather in feminine outrage.

"Viv, your godfather is incorrigible." Ganos said with an exasperated shake of her head.

"My dogfather does indeed think himself quite the comedian." Vivian agreed.

"Not you too." Remus moaned in dismay. "I've heard that joke from Sirius so much that it got old ages ago. Please tell me you're not taking after him Vivian. Please."

"Then I won't tell you." Vivian replies with a playful smirk, causing the werewolf to palm his face.

"Shouldn't we do something about _that_?" Hermione asked even as she munched on a scone and gestured at Sirius and Eldarose's increasingly over the top chase. The former having mixed in apparition as the latter brought out her conjured vines.

"It's fine," Kalwart reassured the witch as she sipped daintily from her cup of tea. "It's all in good fun."

"If you say so," Hermione replied, sounding skeptical.

"Kalwart dear, I've been meaning to ask but what are you wearing?" Ganos asked curiously as she eyed the elaborate outfit their daughter had chosen for the occasion.

"It's a hanfu." Kalwart explained. "It's courtly dress in Jade. I'm going there for a state visit soon and intend to dress as such on occasion during the trip to show my appreciation for their culture. As such, I'm trying it out now to get used to it."

"I think it makes you look gorgeous." Vivian offered her daughter.

"Thank you Mother, but you're hardly objective."

"Well, I agree with your mother." Ganos chimed in loyally.

"Neither are you Father."

"I think it's a little overdone even for courtly attire but it does make you look great, Kalwart." Hermione affirmed with Remus nodding in agreement.

"Thank you, Hermione, Remus."

Further conversation was interrupted by a bound and gagged Sirius being unceremoniously dumped in their midst.

"I've caught him." Eldarose declared triumphantly as she walked back over with her arms crossed.

"We can see that," Kalwart replied dryly as she eyed the bound man struggling futilely against his bonds.

"Daughter, remove his bonds please."

Huffing in annoyance, Eldarose complied with her mother's request.

"Thanks Viv, you're a lifesaver. I was choking back there." Sirius said as soon as the conjured vines disappeared in particles of light.

"Sirius," Vivian said sternly as she sat up and looked him seriously in the eyes. "Stop sexually harassing my daughters."

"I didn't." Sirius replied, blanching. "I was just teasing."

An unimpressed hoot from Hedwig as she flew over to perch on her shoulders, encapsulated both their feelings perfectly.

"Okay, okay, I'll stop." Sirius said with a scolded look. "But did you honestly think I was making a move on your girls?"

"No," Vivian confessed. "But you have to keep in mind appearances. Remember, we're all public figures now."

Sirius' shoulders slumped a little at that but nevertheless nodded.

Deciding that having a serious Sirius was a major killjoy, Vivian decided to have a little fun.

"Tag you're it!" Vivian shouted with a smirk before smacking her godfather on the shoulder and racing off into the woods with a laugh, Hedwig flying overhead.

Behind her, she heard Sirius sputter in confusion for a moment before crying out that it was unfair catching him unawares like that. He didn't mind too much though, if the sound of eager canine feet in pursuit of her moments later was any indication.

Thus it was that Vivian spent the rest of the afternoon in an entertaining game of tag with her family.

* * *

That night, Hedwig and Vivian sat beside each other on a log along the river in the middle of the Grand Aviary enjoying the relaxing sound of the running water.

"Today was a good day, wasn't it Hedwig?"

The owl hooted in agreement, bobbing her head up and down to further emphasize her agreement.

"Thanks for being a good sport and letting us share your Aviary."

Hedwig barked sternly.

"I know, I know, what's yours is mine." Vivian said reaching over to affectionately run a hand through the owl's feathers. "But thank you anyway."

Hedwig fluttered into the air a moment before landing on Vivian's shoulder and rubbing her cheek against the woman's own while mewling happily.

"I love you too, old friend." Vivian returned with a kiss between her first friend's eyes.

"Viv, you there?"

"Over here!" Hedwig's Vivian shouted in reply. "Just spending time with Hedwig."

"I can see that," Ganos said as she walked over with a smile.

"Why were you looking for me?" Vivian asked, much to Hedwig's consternation.

_My human can be so dense at times, _Hedwig thought with an exasperated shake of her head. Poking her in the side of her head, Hedwig took to the air and retook her perch on the log.

"Hedwig, what's that for?"

Chuckling, Ganos explained for Hedwig. "I'm thinking she thinks it's about time you spent time with your _wife_? Aren't I right, Hedwig?"

The owl nodded.

"Oh, is it really getting that late already?"

"I was getting ready for bed," Ganos said with a sultry smile. "Considering which sexy lingerie to wear for you tonight but lo and behold, you were missing."

Vivian, much to Hedwig's amusement, swallowed hard.

"I'm sorry. Let's go," Hedwig's human said as she stood up. "Bye Hedwig."

Hedwig barked in farewell.

The two human women waved at the owl as they walked off, arm in arm.

_Good. Hopefully they have more chicks soon. _Hedwig thought as she fluttered into the air and headed towards her nest. _I want a chance to spoil some young ones._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> This was a blast to write! Writing from Hedwig's perspective was more fun than I imagined.
> 
> So I hope this ties up a few more loose ends. Namely what happened to Hedwig, Sirius and Remus. Hope it's a satisfying answer for everyone. It's a nicer outcome than what I usually write for the two gentlemen, just ask Engineer4Ever. In the fics I collab with him, they frequently end up with sad outcomes. Hope you like the fact I chose to go a different path this time.
> 
> Anyways there's more sidestories planned, so I hope that you'll stick around.
> 
> Till next time, ciao!


	4. Dad Time

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Dad Time**

**One-shot**

**Beta: **

* * *

Ganos Lal, also known as Morgan Le Fay, consort of the Albionian Mother Empress Nimue, ancient Ascended Being sat across a wrought iron table in one of the gardens of the New Water Palace on Londinium and stared in wonder at her two grown daughters.

"So girls," the Ascended Being asked with exasperation. "Any idea on what we're supposed to be doing?"

Kalwart just gave an elegant shrug, while her twin shook her head aggressively.

Ganos just sighed.

The three were supposed to be spending 'dad time', as her wife Nimue put it, in a bid to get to know each other better but all three of them were at a loss as to what they could actually do together.

"We could go watch a movie?" Eldarose suggested after a long moment of silence. "It's what families do, right?"

Kalwart's face scrunched up in distaste at the suggestion.

"I'd rather not," the less militant of the twins told her sister. "That sounds like a thoroughly unproductive use of our time."

"And sitting here staring blankly at each other isn't?"

"We could just go back to work then?" Kalwart suggested eagerly.

Eldarose seemed to like the idea too if the way she nodded agreeably was any indication. It seems her little girls had both grown up into absolute workaholics.

"I think your mother would be disappointed if we just did that," Ganos informed her daughters, causing them both to deflate.

"Maybe we can just chat instead?" Kalwart offered. "Mother only insisted we try for an hour or two, right? Surely we can keep up a conversation for that long."

"I'm sure we can," Ganos offered generously even as Eldarose gestured to a waiting servant standing nearby and ordered some tea and snacks be delivered for them.

As the trio settled down for what was shaping up into being an extended tea session, the girls' father decided to start the ball rolling with a basic question.

"So what exactly have you two been doing lately?"

"I've been busy organizing our fleets after the recent wars," Eldarose informed her with a proud tilt of her head. "With all our losses, and the new ships rushed into service to replace them, our units and formations are in need of restructuring. Plus I've to plan out what exactly we're going to send to reinforce the Atlantis Expedition."

"It's going to be substantial, I hope." The former Lantean said. "Enough to finally liberate the poor people of the Pegasus?"

"I won't make promises," the First Fleet Lord of Albion replied with a smirk. "But let's just say that I'm confident it'll prove more than enough."

"It better be," Kalwart cut in just as the servants returned and began serving the food and tea they'd brought with them. "It's taken a considerable amount of concerted diplomatic effort to get those plans you made approved by the rest of the Coalition. I'd hate for it all to have gone to waste."

"And you have my thanks for the effort, sister." Eldarose said, tipping her tea cup at her sister in gratitude.

"What plans exactly?" Ganos asked curiously.

"It's a surprise, Father." Kalwart said quickly before her twin could say anything and eyed their surroundings meaningfully. "You can read the reports about it later in a more _secure _environment."

"You're paranoid, sister. This is the palace, isn't it secure enough?"

"It maybe, Eldarose," Ganos said, coming to Kalwart's defense. "But we should always be cautious. I'll do as you say Kalwart."

"See," Kalwart said, offering a victorious smirk to her twin. "Father gets it."

Eldarose just shook her head at her sister's antics.

"Excessive caution is just paranoia."

"And too little is recklessness."

The twins exchanged a glare at that, one they maintained for a good half a minute before they both devolved into giggles. A sight that brought a smile to Ganos' own face.

"So Kalwart, is helping to get approval for Eldarose's deployments to Pegasus all that you've been working on lately?" Ganos asked once her daughters recovered from their amusement.

"No, but it has been a highlight." Kalwart explained. "Beyond that, there's just been the day to day affairs of running the Empire that I handle."

"I hope your Mother doesn't overwork you," Ganos teased.

"Of course she wouldn't," Kalwart shot back instinctively causing Ganos to flinch back slightly.

"Sorry, it's just _everyone _seems to think Mother overworks me. Aunt Saya and Diva always ask about it when they visit or call."

"That's only because no one ever sees Mother actually work herself." Eldarose chimed in. "She's always so sneaky about it. I know that as an Ascended Being she doesn't really _need _sleep, but burning the midnight oil all the time can't be healthy either."

Ganos could attest to that. Her wife had always been known to hide the effort she put towards ensuring her realm was running efficiently from the public. It was not uncommon for her to spend the whole day in seeming leisure only to spend the bulk of the night doing paperwork. All so she could maintain a veneer of mystique around her.

"Your Mother has her eccentricities," Ganos agreed. "Though I think I've managed to get her to cut down on it. But since I was away for so long I can't be sure, have I made a difference?"

"You have," Kalwart agreed. "At least she isn't pulling all nighters now and is sensibly doing her work in the daylight hours now."

"All the help you give her makes a big difference too." Eldarose added. "I heard from the servants that since you came back, Mother's managed to cut her office hours down by more than half."

"Which is a relief," Kalwart said with a nod. "Mother works too much as is."

"Agreed," both Ganos and Eldarose said at the same time. The action bringing a smile to both their faces.

"So Eldarose you brought up your mother's Ascended state just now. Any chance you might want to Ascend?"

"Not in a million years," Eldarose replied strongly. "Unless I can Ascend in the way mother did or like the Chiropteran Queens do, I won't do it. Unfortunately, we don't know how. No offense, Father, but I won't ever want to be subject to the rules of the Others and we all know that they'll insist we are if we Ascend your way."

"I understand," Ganos said with a disappointed sigh.

She understood her daughter's logic and even agreed with it. The Others' rules were onerous and crafted by a bunch of frankly out of touch beings. It was liberating indeed to be even partially free of them as she was now after millennia under their authority. Nevertheless, she couldn't help but feel sad that she couldn't share the same state of being with her little girl.

"Before you ask, Father, I agree with Eldarose on this."

Make that her little girl_s_.

"Pardon me for asking, Father," Eldarose asked suddenly. "But have you been wearing clothes out of Mother's closet?"

Ganos blushed and smoothed the skirt of the red Baroque Masquerade ball gown she was wearing self-consciously. The dress wasn't exactly her style but Vivian had the servants lay it out for her this morning and even helped her into it. How could she say no to wearing it after all that? Particularly when she had no clothes of her own to speak of beyond whatever she conjured.

"Yes," Ganos nevertheless admitted to her children. "How could you tell?"

"You don't look entirely comfortable in it to be honest. You keep fidgeting." Kalwart began.

"And it's something Mother would wear," Eldarose picked up where her twin left off.

"We just put two and two together."

"That's very good deductive reasoning," Ganos complimented, causing both her daughters to grin at the praise.

"What kind of clothes would you prefer Father?" Kalwart asked.

"Honestly, I never gave it much thought. I was never very fashion conscious." Ganos mused thoughtfully. "Before you two were born and I was with your Mother I usually wore gowns of some type or the other as that was the dress code for the court. And in the Ascended Plane and back before I Ascended, I tended towards simple outfits I guess."

"Would you like it if we had some outfits made?" Eldarose asked. "In the styles back from when you lived on _Atlantis_?"

"I wouldn't mind some of them, I suppose," Ganos agreed. "Though some in Earth styles wouldn't be remiss either."

"You like them?"

Ganos nodded.

Kalwart activated her kara kesh and pulled up an image board of various fashionable looking clothing, quickly cycling through the selection to a number of suits.

"Let's start with some suits. Which ones do you like?" She asked enthusiastically. "We'll pick them out and have some tailored for you."

"Alongside the _Atlantis _style ones," Eldarose reminded as she used her own kara kesh to call up a word processor to start taking notes.

"Bring up a selection of dresses after we're done with the suits," Ganos told her daughters as she scrolled through the images Kalwart was projecting. "I'd like some variety."

"Anything you say, Father." Kalwart assured her. "This is _your _wardrobe we're talking about."

"Exactly. So pick anything you want." Eldarose insisted.

Ganos smiled and nodded as she continued with the important task of selecting her new clothes.

* * *

In her office, deep within the private wing of the palace, Nimue smirked as she looked away from the projection of her family's little tea party as it descended into clothes shopping.

"At last Ganos is expressing an opinion on what she wears instead of just putting on anything I ask her to," she said with exasperation. "And all it took was forcing her to spend alone time with the girls. It took her long enough."

"Well, it helped save some on the household budget?" Baltet suggested tentatively.

"Not by much," Nimue said with a shake of her head. "Not once the girls get their hands on it and empty Ganos' entire clothing budget for the year on the new wardrobe they're undoubtedly planning for her."

"It's for a good cause?"

"I suppose it is, Baltet, I suppose it is." Nimue mused in amusement even as she closed the video feed. "But back to business. How goes the study of the Chappa'ko?"

As her son delved into the details of his efforts understanding the Ori construct, Nimue paid close attention to his report. Though not without first making a mental note to ask the twins if their father had shown any special interest in any designs they looked through. It wouldn't do for her not to contribute something special to her own wife's new wardrobe now would it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> Just a little oneshot to show the twins getting used to having their Father back. Hope you guys enjoyed it.
> 
> Till next time, ciao~!


	5. A Wizard's visit to Hogwarts

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: A Wizard's visit to Hogwarts**

**One-shot**

**Beta: **

* * *

Ron Weasley stepped off the luxurious passenger ship, a retired and refitted Ha'tak, that had brought him on his first ever interstellar voyage and into the bustling Hogwarts spaceport. The place resembled something like what he'd seen of muggle airports before Disclosure but crossed with architecture that wouldn't have been out of place in Hogsmeade, with a dash of Ancient Egyptian slipped in for good measure.

It was also practically full to bursting with people.

That, fortunately, was not a problem for him as moments after stepping off the docking bridge that connected his ship to the facility, he found himself greeted by his old friend Hermione and a contingent of guards.

"Ron!" The bushy haired woman, who looked even more pretty than he last saw her he noted distractedly, shouted his name over the ambient noise of the crowded terminal. "Over here!"

The lanky redhead wizard offered her a wave and began walking towards her, pushing through the crowd of other disembarking passengers. He was helped along when a pair of Hermione's guards came over to help clear the way.

"Thanks guys," the Weasley offered to the two fully armored soldiers.

They just nodded in return. He didn't begrudge them their silence though, they were on duty after all. He wasn't sure but maybe they had some kind of professional code that meant they had to maintain silence on duty or something.

"Is it always this crowded?" Ron asked as he reached Hermione's side.

"Yeah," Hermione said, with a nod. "It's why Nim says she's building another two terminals."

"Think that'll be enough?" Ron asked skeptically as he eyed the throngs all around them.

"Who knows?" Hermione said with a shrug. "All the projections on required capacity have been off so far. But hopefully it'll help at least somewhat."

"Mam, Sir, the hovercar is waiting," one of their guards, a woman by the sound of her voice, though Ron couldn't be sure thanks to her armor.

"Lead the way, Prime," Hermione replied with a nod and their small group began making their way through the building until they ended up at a car porch where a sleek emerald green limousine style hovercar waited for them.

"Why does it look like a vintage Rolls Royce just missing the wheels?" Ron asked suspiciously as he studied the vehicle.

"I kinda, might have told Nim I liked the design?" Hermione said with a blush. "She gave it to me as my birthday present last year."

"She likes her expensive gifts, huh?" Ron said with a shake of his head as he handed his luggage over to a waiting porter that proceeded to load it into the limousine's boot. "She got me an Excalibur racing broom."

"The one which can break the sound barrier?" Hermione asked incredulously as they got into her car whilst their escorts mainly filed into the waiting Fan'cas - _That's what they're called, right?_ \- in front and behind them though one took a sit next to their driver, leaving him alone with Hermione in the passenger compartment.

"Yup, the one where only a dozen were built," Ron agreed. "She got me serial number one, too. I got it appraised and they said it's probably worth a few million pounds _at least_."

"Well, Nim does have money to spare," Hermione laughed awkwardly even as she nodded to her chauffeur and their motorcade got going.

"So was showing off your car why we didn't just apparate or use one of the ring transporter stations I've heard people use to get around here?"

"Actually, it's because Nim and I thought you'd like a bird's eye view of the planet." Hermione said with a smile as she gestured out the window.

Curious, Ron looked out like she suggested and couldn't help the awed gasp as he saw the sprawling metropolis of Gryffindor spread out below them. It enthralled him for a few minutes, but he wasn't much for scenery so he quickly turned to his friend instead.

"So what have you been doing lately?" He asked curiously.

Shaking her head at him, probably exasperated at his lack of wonder, she nevertheless replied.

"I'm basically just bumming around at Nimue's leisure, doing odd jobs for her." Hermione admitted with a chuckle. "Don't tell my parents."

"I won't," Ron agreed, chuckling as well.

Mr. and Mrs. Granger would have a fit if they heard their daughter had essentially become a layabout. Not after all the money they'd paid for her to get all her fancy degrees. Never mind that thanks to their friend Nimue's generosity she was probably the richest layabout in the galaxy.

"What about you then, Ron? Still working at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?"

"Yup, still store manager for the flagship store in Diagon Alley."

"You've been there for ages," Hermione noted with a frown. "Fred and George still haven't promoted you yet?"

"They tried. I've turned them down." Ron informed her. "I don't want a promotion. The work at the job is just the right level for me and pays well enough to let me live a good enough life. So I'm happy as is."

Hermione laughed wholeheartedly at this.

"We're both totally not living up to our potential, huh?" She noted with a grin.

"I wouldn't say that," Ron replied with a shrug. "We _are _living up to our ambition after all. It's just that our ambitions aren't exactly what most people would consider normal."

"I suppose you're right."

"Mam, Sir, we've arrived," the driver chimed in over the intercom cutting their conversation short.

"You ready?"

"Should I know anything?" Ron asked, confused that Hermione would even ask.

"Just know that Nim can be, _um_, very welcoming."

"Whatcha me-"

Ron's question was answered when in a brilliant blue flash Nimue appeared beside him and pulled him into a hug.

"Welcome to Hogwarts, Ron." His old friend said with a broad smile. "It's so good to see you."

* * *

That night as Ron got ready for bed, he still couldn't wrap his head around the sheer ostentatious wealth Nimue had access to. Her Water Palace was like something straight out of a fairy tale and that look alone must have cost a fortune to achieve. She didn't skimp out on the small details either, from the simplest cushion to the art that lined its walls everything was probably each worth a fortune. And this was only just _one _of her palaces!

_I knew she was rich. _Ron thought as he finished brushing his teeth. _But I never knew she was _this _rich._

As if that wasn't mind-blowing enough, there was also how Hermione seemed so blasé about it. She'd come from a more privileged background moneywise than he was sure, but this was wealth on a scale he doubted she'd ever seen before she moved to Hogwarts either. Yet, she seemed to barely notice it at all.

_She must have gotten used to it. She has been living here for a couple of years already._

Both of these things were a little shocking, but to his pleasant surprise he found that unlike when he was a kid, he wasn't particularly peeved by it all. After all as Nimue's friend, he was reaping the benefits of all that wealth too.

He was just pulling the duvet off the four poster bed of his guest suite when a knock on his suite's front door caught his attention.

_Wonder who it is._ He mused idly as he went to check.

Opening the door, he was surprised to find Hermione with a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses.

"Up for some drinks?" She asked with a grin.

"Sure," he replied with a smile of his own. "Come on in."

"Thanks," the beautiful woman said as she walked in.

_Is it just me or is she shaking her hips a little?_ Ron thought while swallowing to wet his suddenly dry throat.

He and Hermione had been an item once or twice, but it'd never really worked out long term. And it'd been a long time since they'd been together so he was a little worried that he might be reading her cues wrong.

_Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. _

Deciding that it was time to be a little daring, he asked, "So are drinks all you want us to share tonight?"

Blushing prettily, Hermione's smile turned coy, "Maybe~"

* * *

The next day, Hermione stumbled her way to a picnic table set up in one of the Water Palace's many gardens to join Vivian and Ron for breakfast.

Her head hurt from all the drinks last night and she was still a little sore from the fun they'd had afterwards, so as she sunk gingerly into her seat all she managed to offer her best friend was a garbled good morning.

"Morning 'Mione," Vivian returned with a teasing smile while gesturing to a pair of vials next to the serving of a traditional English breakfast that the servants were laying out for her. "One's a hangover cure and the other will help with your soreness."

Hermione shot her best friend an annoyed look for being such a nosy parker but nevertheless downed both potions.

"So was Ron as good last night as you remembered him being?"

_Damn! I really shouldn't have told her about my past relationship with Ron._ Hermione thought with a wince. _She's totally milking everything I told her about it to tease me now._

"A lady doesn't discuss her sex life," Hermione deflected.

"But best friends do," Vivian countered. "I tell you what I do with Ganos all the time."

_Yes, to tease me._ Hermione thought, but chose instead to be a little less confrontational.

"And I _never _want to hear about it. And Ganos would rather you didn't too, by the way."

"Oh, I know." Vivian said with a chuckle. "It gets her all embarrassed and angry with me. The make up sex is wonderful."

Hermione wanted to gag, but refrained. Her best friend was _way _too open about her sex life.

"Whatever, I'm not talking." Hermione said with finality.

Vivian opened her mouth presumably to keep teasing her but Hermione was saved when Ron stumbled over to join them.

Quickly switching targets, Vivian smirked and turned to Ron. "Had a wild night?"

"The wildest I've had in awhile," Ron admitted with a groan as he took his seat.

Hermione was quite pleased to hear that. Ron hadn't exactly been celibate since their last breakup, so to hear him say she was still one of his better bedmates filled her with pride.

"Is that so?" Vivian said looking thoroughly amused. "Well, thankfully, I've prepared a hangover cure for you."

Downing the potion Vivian had indicated to him, Ron finally collected himself enough to remember his manners. "Morning, 'Mione, Nim."

"Morning Ron," Vivian returned, with a grin that reminded Hermione of a shark that scented blood in the water she'd seen on the tele once.

Acting quickly before the other woman could dive into a bout of embarrassing teasing, Hermione cut her off, "So what are the plans for today?"

* * *

Those plans as Ron found out involved shopping, the first stop apparently being Gryffindor's Grand Market.

The whole place looked liked a medieval Arab Souq but with dashes of magic and high tech sprinkled throughout. It was a kaleidoscopic mix of hundreds of outlandish things so much so that Ron couldn't really find the words to do it justice. And the people! Oh, the people! There was more people in the marketplace than the wizard had ever seen in one place before.

"Are we going in there?" Ron asked, slightly intimidated by the press of humans, Jaffa and assorted alien races that packed the narrow alleys of the Grand Market.

"Not unless you want to," Nimue said, earning relieved sighs from both her friends. "Do you?"

"No," Hermione said hastily for the both of them.

Not noticing or more likely just deciding not to comment on their reaction, Nimue just nodded and began guiding them away from the Grand Market and towards a very upmarket looking shopping district just a few blocks away.

As they walked the streets, the crowds parted around them automatically, allowing them and their entourage of guards to move unimpeded through the congested thoroughfares.

"You know, I've been wondering about this for a while, but doesn't anyone notice who you are, Nimue?" Ron asked, the curiosity that'd been building since they'd left the palace finally overflowing. "I mean, you're their Mother Empress right?"

Turning to him Nimue just smirked and held up the hand device that she wore on her right hand before explaining. "It's thanks to the Shroud field my kara kesh is generating. I've tuned it so it basically works like a Muggle-Repelling Charm that keeps away people not already aware I'm here."

"That's genius," Ron said with genuine approval.

"It is isn't it?" Nimue said with a proud grin. "It certainly makes trips into town a lot easier."

Hermione shook her head at their friend for some reason and cut in with a question of her own.

"So where are we going exactly? You said shopping but where?"

"You'll see," Nimue replied coyly.

* * *

Nimue had ended up leading them to a classy clothing boutique that had been closed for the day just so it could service them. Ron had never enjoyed anything resembling service like that but he certainly could get used to it. Just like he could get used to the fancy suit he was sporting.

"I dunno about this waistcoat," Ron said as she admired his appearance in front of a mirror. "But even with it, it beats my old dress robes."

"Anything would beat that maroon monstrosity," Hermione commented from behind him, apparently done with picking out and changing into what she'd wanted.

"Can't argue with tha-" Ron trailed off as he turned around, too mesmerized by the sight before him for words.

Hermione was looking absolutely stunning in a cap sleeved purple ball gown with a bateau neckline that was beautifully accentuated by sequins.

"You look beautiful," the wizard whispered in awe.

"Thanks," his friend replied with a blush that just made her seem even more alluring.

"I have to agree. That dress suits you." Nimue said from behind him and Ron struggled to tear his eyes away from Hermione to face his other friend. The effort proved well worth it though as his jaw dropped at the breathtaking sight that greeted him.

If Hermione had been beautiful then Nimue was a veritable living Venus. She had chosen a ball gown as well though hers was sleeveless and had a jewel neckline, with beadings worked throughout the bodice and a skirt that draped to the floor. In contrast to Hermione's choice, it was slightly plain but Nimue's unnatural beauty more than made up for it. It was so much that Ron had to use all his will just to keep from falling to his knees in worship.

Ron didn't know how he managed it, but he recovered himself after a blink or two and quickly glanced towards Hermione worried that he'd offended his maybe girlfriend.

He was relieved though not entirely unsurprised that she wasn't the least bit jealous. She was too busy being just as awestruck by Nimue's beauty as he had been and if he was honest, still was.

"It's not fair," Hermione said after she finally regained her wits. "How can anyone compete with something like that? Nimue!"

Their aforementioned friend just smirked and suddenly like she'd flipped a switch, her level of allure dropped to a more mundane level. She was still absurdly beautiful but Ron was no longer feeling the need to prostrate at her feet.

"How else could I be sure that he was true to you, hmm?"

Ron blinked in confusion. _What did she mean by that?_

"I dunno, ask him questions?" Hermione shot back heatedly.

"Too slow," Nimue said with a shake of her head. "I honestly don't know why you're upset, Hermione, he passed."

"That's besides the point!"

"That was a test?" Ron cut in before the two women devolved into an argument. "Of my feelings for Hermione?"

Nimue nodded. "Yes."

"One which was-"

"Totally expected of your best friend," Ron told his lover.

Hermione looked to him, surprised that he wasn't offended.

"I've been through this before." Ron admitted. "Some of my girlfriends' friends and family sometimes tested me too. Never had one like this, but, hey, at least I passed. I did, right?"

"You did." Nimue agreed with a nod.

"Then, no harm, no foul."

Hermione looked between Ron and Nimue for a moment before shaking her head, "Why are all the people I love so exasperating!?"

* * *

The reason for them getting the new fancy clothes presented itself that night as Ron found himself attending a ball thrown in his honor. At least that was, according to Nimue, the _real _reason. To the public, it was touted as a ball thrown to honor the signing of some trade deal between Albion and the planet Hebridan a week ago. The delay being explained away as being to allow the Hebridian leadership to arrive.

Ron honestly wasn't too convinced but was willing to run with it. He would have been mortified if he was publicly made the guest of honor. Stage fright was something that he still struggled with, and being the center of attention at one of Nimue's balls was a bigger stage than anything he'd been on before. Just the idea of being put in that position sent a shiver down his spine.

"Don't think about it. It isn't happening. You're just another guest tonight. Nothing else." Hermione, his date for the evening, told him, correctly guessing the cause of his fears.

"I wouldn't go _that _far," Ron corrected. "I do have the privilege of having the prettiest lady on the planet as my date. So that's gotta count for something."

"You flatterer," Hermione replied with a chuckle, even as her cheeks were dusted with a pretty pink.

"Did it work? Enough at least for you to agree to a dance?"

"More than enough," his lover said with a shy smile as she let him lead her to the dance floor.

* * *

The next few days after the ball, Ron spent exploring Gryffindor city with Hermione, Nimue being too busy ruling her country to accompany them.

They'd spent the time seeing the sights such as the Grand Temple of Nimue, the mother temple dedicated to their friend which the woman in question was unwilling to visit due to her insistence that she was not a goddess futile though her assertions were to her devout followers. They'd also toured the Albion National Museum with its vast collection of artifacts from across the galaxy, many of which had been recovered by Nimue herself.

They'd also explored the city's vibrant nightlife by hitting its pubs and clubs, soaking up the youth culture of one of the greatest cities in the galaxy. A task that their aging bodies, even if they were still only in their late twenties, were starting to find difficult to keep up with. Maybe it was just a cultural thing and the Albionians partied harder than most?

It was as they sat at a pub nursing drinks and cooling down after their failed attempt at clubbing that Ron asked about the first and most prominent thing he noted about Albion so far.

"Hey Hermione," he asked as they settled into a booth with a couple bottles of beer, their omnipresent guard detail taking up posts all over the rest of the pub. "Is it just me or are the ladies here a lot more what people back home would consider traditionally feminine? Almost all the women are wearing dresses or skirts and they all seemed to at least try to act demure and ladylike."

"It isn't just the ladies," Hermione added. "The guys are different too. Men here are a lot more assertive and genuinely respectful to women. It was a bit of a shock getting used to."

"Genuinely respectful?" Ron asked with a frown. "You saying guys from Earth don't really respect women?"

"No, no," Hermione corrected hastily. "I'm phrasing it wrong. What I mean is that men here are less afraid of women. They're less scared that women will just cry sexual harassment out of the blue for no reason. That's not a thing here. So when guys are respectful they're most likely genuine."

Ron nodded. "I getcha. It's a lot like the Wizarding World before Disclosure then."

"Yeah," Hermione said with a swig of her beer. "There's a lot of good things Disclosure brought but extending the gender war to the wizarding world isn't one of them."

Ron hummed in agreement.

"So how did this come about? I mean a lot of the culture here is familiar but this sticks out a little."

"More than the aliens everywhere?"

"They're getting pretty common on Earth too, so yeah. Honestly, this is probably the most obvious thing. At least to me."

Hermione gave him a look like he was crazy.

"Okay, so maybe it isn't. But it's on my mind, okay?"

His lover accepted that with a nod.

"So you wanted to know how this culture come about?" Hermione asked and Ron nodded.

"Well, it's because Nimue favored these traditional gender roles thanks to her own experiences and that has translated into the culture of her people."

"What kinda experiences? I mean, I know Harry _hated _his Aunt and Uncle so it can't be living with them."

Hermione made a disgusted face at the mention of their friend's abominable relatives before nodding in agreement. "Definitely not the Dursleys. If anything they were negative examples. I'm talking about your mum mainly. She said that she admired Mrs. Weasley's mothering and how it produced strong, independent children. At the same time though, she also saw how your dad's often unassertive attitude meant she went overboard a lot. So she thought the ideal mix would be a toned down version of your mum paired with a more assertive version of your dad. Add a dash of Jaffa gender norms, thousands of years and viola we've got what we have today."

Ron nodded along, fighting a blush at thinking about how his parents had essentially shaped the culture of an entire civilization.

At the same time he mulled over Hermione's seeming ready acceptance of such norms. Considering her rather radical views on the subject the last time that Ron had asked for her opinion on the matter, he was shocked to hear her be so accepting of the Albionian take on things.

"So you think this is better?" Ron asked cautiously.

"Yeah," Hermione admitted with a sigh. "I mean, I can't deny evidence. And Albion is proof that in the long term, the more traditional approach has created a long lasting complementarity between the sexes and through it practical equality than my old feminist notions of complete equality between men and women are likely to ever achieve. I sat in on a few classes at Londinium University and found out that both models and everything in between have been experimented with by human cultures across the galaxy many, many times and it seems like it's the 'traditional' model which lasts in the long run. It being the one that dominates the majority of human civilizations in the galaxy till this day, even if most of that is because of the Jaffa being as numerous as they are."

_Hermione admitting her ideals were wrong!? Has she been replaced by someone using Polyjuice?_

Ron's surprise at hearing this must have shown on his face because Hermione chuckled a little self-deprecatingly.

"I guess I deserve that look." She said with another sip of her almost finished beer. "I can be a stubborn ass, I know that. But like I said I can't deny evidence and even if I discount the many, many civilizations which tried for total equality and failed, just one look at the chaos its causing back on Earth and I'd be convinced. Compare it to the comparatively stable society of Albion and I'd be an idiot to deny it."

"And you're no idiot," Ron said as he gestured to a passing waiter for a couple more beers.

Hermione just nodded.

_This was massive. _Ron realized as the significance of what Hermione was saying began to sink it. That Hermione could admit to being wrong about some of her most dearly held ideals was something of a shocker to Ron. She'd always been so very, very stubborn.

That she'd learned to compromise and change gave him hope that his dreams for a fully rekindled relationship with her would work this time. Their clashes over some of her sillier notions having been the cause of their breakup last time.

_It could work… It really could. All I need to do is not be an idiot about it._

"To not being idiots," Ron toasted, earning a chuckle from Hermione as she echoed him and clinked her bottle with his own.

* * *

On the day before Ron's departure, Nimue had found some time in her schedule to join them once more and had arranged something special.

_Something special, indeed._ Ron mused with a grin that even without seeing it himself he _knew _had a perverted edge to it.

Not that he could be blamed for it. After all, what hot blooded straight man wouldn't be turned on by Hermione Granger rocking a bikini! It was a reasonably modest white floral print halter neck set but nevertheless served to show off his lover's curvaceous figure.

The other women at the private lake cum water park in the Water Gardens were stunning as well, but as attractive as Nimue or Ganos or their daughters were, Ron only had eyes for Hermione.

A fact that was not lost of the woman if the blush that painted her fair skin a pretty pink and the happy smile she kept flashing his way were any indication.

"Well, you certainly like what you see." Nimue said as she settled on a pool chair next to Ron's own. "You really do love her don't you?"

"Was today another test?"

"Not at all," Nimue replied, to Ron's slight surprise. "More like a chance for you ogle and for Hermione to show off a little."

"You're a good friend," Ron told her honestly.

"I try," Nimue said with a grin. "Though mind being one for me too?"

"Whatcha mean?"

"Ganos is off getting some suntan lotion for me," Nimue explained with a wink even as she laid the pool chair flat and began pulling down the top of her one-piece. "Mind not being here when she gets back?"

Quickly averting his eyes, Ron jumped to his feet and with a hasty nod, all but ran away. He was trailed by Nimue's giggling, but he didn't care. He was _not _going to play third wheel to his friend's intimate time with her wife. Besides, the playfully sultry look Hermione was shooting him as she waved him over told him he had a lover of his own to entertain.

* * *

A week after he arrived on Hogwarts, Ron was back in a luxurious cabin aboard yet another retired Ha'tak that had been converted into an interstellar equivalent of a cruise liner. As he settled into bed on the first night of his trip back to Earth, he thought back with pleasure on his eventful visit to Hogwarts.

For a whole week he'd enjoyed the royal treatment, visiting upper class places that he'd never ever thought he would get the chance to see the inside of with his own eyes. From fancy stores to palaces to exclusive tourist attractions.

It was amazing but overwhelming, he couldn't imagine living like that for the rest of his life. He couldn't understand how Hermione managed. Give him a simple life any day.

_Speaking of Hermione… _Ron said as he pulled out his new smartphone, a gift from Nimue, and admired the screensaver - _That's what it's called, right?_ \- which showed the bushy haired woman posing for the camera.

When they'd parted at the spaceport, she'd kissed him and promised to visit him back on Earth soon. Honestly, Ron couldn't wait. To tide him over though, Hermione had been nice enough to load his phone up with plenty of, in her words, 'naughty' pictures and videos of her for the lonely nights.

It wasn't quite becoming an official couple, but Ron was confident it was a pretty good step in that direction.

_Now if only we didn't have half the galaxy separating us most of the time. Hmm… Maybe I can convince the twins to open up a shop on Hogwarts? I'm sure Nimue wouldn't object. _

The idea definitely had merit and was something that Ron would have to explore when he had more time. Right now though, he had a date with Hermione's present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> I hope this satisfies those of you who might have wanted a glimpse into the culture of Albion. When realizing that I needed to tie up the loose end that was Ron, I came up with this as a perfect way to kill two birds with one stone.
> 
> On another note, the talk about gender roles. I will admit that I had Ron and Hermione essentially be my mouthpieces here in my opinion that complementarity coupled with equality of opportunity rather than total equality is the better way to go, but I didn't include it to argue that point. Mainly it's to make Albion different from our frame of reference in the real world and then explain it. It's a subtle and logical difference, so I fit it in. As for the part about it being the dominant social model in the galaxy, as said by Hermione that's entirely due to the Jaffa. They dominate the galaxy are their social model as seen in canon is very traditional. So with my logic outlined, let me just say that I didn't do it to start a political debate so please don't do so via a review or PMs.
> 
> I got an interesting comment last sidestory from DrachenEngel. Seeing as some people might not read comments, I'm going to repeat the salient details. They asked about whether I'd do a sidestory about Albionian students at Hogwarts. The answer is no, I have no plans for it unless I have a powerful hook to inspire me to do so. For those curious about the Albionian presence at Hogwarts though, here's a quick summary: It mainly consists of a team led by Magi making digital copies of the Hogwarts library. No Albionians would send their children to what in their opinion is a backwards school that only teaches magic and doesn’t cover the vast majority of subjects their children will need like maths and science. While there, the Magi might exchange some notes with the Professors but that’s about it. The Professors aren’t researchers at the cutting edge of magical research after all, they’re teachers of known magic so even that’s not very helpful. Albion gets much better insight from the joint magitech research facility they set up with Homeworld Defense at the end of the Reunion interlude.
> 
> That's it I think for this chapter. There's three more sidestories planned ahead, one of which is a multi parter, so I hope some of you at least will join me then.
> 
> Till then, adieu!


	6. A Sage's Plea

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: A Sage's Plea**

**One-shot**

**Beta:**

* * *

**Sometime before the arrival of the first Prior in the Milky Way**

Saya and Diva were enjoying some quiet time on the Ascended Plane. They had even asked their daughters to give them some time alone to ponder what steps, if any, they could take to prepare for the looming war with the Ori. Their tranquil little idyll was disturbed however when their little cafe was visited by a brunette human woman with beautiful Mediterranean features dressed in a classical Greek chiton and peplos.

"Who dares?" Saya demanded, standing to glare at the intruder even as her rapier materialized in her hand. "We clearly indicated that we wanted to be left alone."

"Apologies, your Majesties." The human offered with a deep bow. "But I _must _speak with you."

"And who exactly _are _you?" Diva asked sharply.

"My name is Athena," the Ascended said. "Of the Sages of Kobol and I come to seek your assistance, O exalted Swarm Queens."

"If you're here to entreaty our help then the least you could do is to appear before us in her your true form." Diva said bluntly.

"Apologies, your Majesties." Athena said, looking embarrassed. "I've worn this form so long that it's become second nature. But as you requested I'll return to my true one."

Her body glowed for a moment before the light faded to reveal a small furry, koala-like humanoid which was strangely enough still wearing the same garments only now resized to fit its reduced frame

"A Furling?" Saya asked with a raised eyebrow as she sat down once more. "I'd have thought after the bad blood between our races caused by the Extinction War, you'd stay far away from us. And here you are asking for our help?"

"I'm honestly just surprised that any of the Furlings managed to Ascend at all." Diva hummed curiously. "Didn't your race get wiped out by the Ori plague?"

"We did," Athena replied in a squeaky child-like voice. "But a small number of us survived by achieving Ascension using the techniques taught to us by our Alteran allies. We call ourselves the Sages of Kobol after the world where we achieved enlightenment."

"Fascinating," Saya said disinterestedly. "However, you mentioned you wanted our help? With what exactly?"

"To understand that I'll need to sketch a story. Would that be ok?" Athena asked respectfully.

Saya shot Diva a look and received a disinterested nod in reply.

"Very well," the Red Queen informed their visitor.

Giving a nod in thanks, the Ewok looking Furling began spinning her tale.

"Several thousand years ago, a damaged Goa'uld mothership fell out of hyperspace over and eventually crashed onto Kobol with a hold full of human slaves that it had been transporting. We assumed the guise of some of their gods and rescued the humans that managed to survive, whilst dealing with the Goa'uld and his surviving Jaffa retinue." The Ascended Furling said as a series of images displaying the events she was describing appeared behind her for the Swarm Queens to visualize what happened. "This inevitably caught the attention of the Others. We were elated at first to meet fellow Ascended again, having lost contact with the handful of Ascended Alterans in the Milky Way from before the plague long ago, and greeted them with open arms."

"And then they came and imposed their rules on you, didn't they?" Diva snorted. "They always do."

"They did," Athena agreed with a very human looking frown. "Since we'd Ascended using their methods, the Others counted us as part of their number and thus under their jurisdiction. And with only twelve of us, we couldn't oppose them-"

"Nimue's only one person and she doesn't let them boss her around." Diva noted.

"None of us, or even collectively, are even a fraction of Nimue's power." Athena replied. "And even if we were, we are pacifists. We simply didn't have the will to defy the Others."

"What was your punishment?" Saya asked before her twin and guest could further ruminate on the tangent the conversation had taken.

"They bound us to the people we'd rescued and restricted how we could interact with them. It wasn't particularly onerous and for a time we were actually quite happy with the arrangement."

"For a time?" Saya asked with narrowed eyes. "What happened?"

"Despite our entreaties and guidance, our people, the twelve tribes of Kobol, developed artificial intelligence and treated them as slaves. Naturally they rebelled." Athena said with a sad shake of her head. "The war that followed ended in human victory for the most part but devastated Kobol, rendering it nigh uninhabitable."

"And then you intervened, didn't you?" Diva asked knowingly as she took a sip from her cup of coffee.

"We did," Athena acknowledged with a nod. "Disregarding the rules the Others imposed on us, we actively helped the twelve human tribes and the thirteenth robotic tribe each build interstellar capable ships well beyond their technological capabilities. Our help had the tribes rechristening us as the Lords of Kobol and that-"

"Made the Others take notice and intervene again." Saya said with a peeved sigh. The Others were often incredibly neglectful, even when it came to enforcing their own rules but when it came to Ascended attempting or even inadvertently becoming associated with godhood, they seemed almost eager to deliver their brand of twisted justice.

Athena just nodded again and continued with her story. "They punished us. Oh, they allowed us to guide the tribes to new homes, but they also cursed them."

"Cursed them? How?" Diva asked curiously.

"The Others scattered technology pertaining to the creation of artificial intelligence and advanced robotics on the worlds our children would settle."

"Tempting them to repeat the same mistake that had already destroyed them once." Saya noted with a disgusted shake of her head.

"Yes, and forbade us from interfering." Athena said solemnly. "Already, the cycle has repeated once. The robotic tribe having forgotten their own roots, built slave robots of their own and- Well, you can imagine the outcome."

The Swarm Queens just nodded.

"A third repetition of the cycle is unfolding isn't it?" Diva asked leadingly. "And you want us to break it."

"Yes," Athena confirmed. "As Ascended Beings outside the Others' jurisdiction, if you intervened and stopped things then-"

"Then the Others can do nothing about it." Saya finished for her. "Smart move."

Athena acknowledged the compliment with a gracious nod.

"Diva?" Saya asked, as she turned to her sister.

_I'm not opposed in principle. Getting more Ascended on our side before the Ori make their move is a good idea. _The Blue Queen sent back. _The question is what kind of intervention is required. If it's too involved, it might not be worth it._

Nodding, Saya turned to Athena, "What exactly do you want us to do?"

* * *

Ellen Tigh, of the First Five Cylons, was running in fear through the corridors of the half completed Cylon mobile homeworld, the Colony, as a mob of Ones stirred up by their leader to box her and her fellows for nebulous reasons chased after her.

"There she is!" A One shouted from a hallway that intersected with the one she occupied. "Shoot her!"

Immediately, the Centurions it commanded opened fire and Ellen barely managed to dive out of the way of their hail of bullets.

_Not that I'll be safe for long. _The 'mother of the Cylons' thought. _The Centurions will catch me soon enough._

Sure enough, she was just getting back to her feet and preparing to run when the sound of heavy, mechanical footsteps from behind her had her spinning around in fear to see a trio of the robotic soldiers marching towards her with their weapons leveled directly at her.

_I guess this is the e-_

She was unable to finish the thought as she was distracted by a burst of white light that deposited a unknown creature directly between her and the advancing Centurions.

It was a monstrous thing with a muscular torso, a pair of relatively short but clearly powerful digitigrade legs, and long arms that drooped to the floor. She couldn't see its face, but she imagined it looked as terrifying as the rest of it did. It was also clearly heavily augmented by a series of implants. Some of which must have included weapons of some kind, for it summarily destroyed the Centurions with bolts of blue light.

_What the hell is going on here?_

* * *

**Sometime earlier**

Diva frowned at the image the Cylon's unfinished mobile homeworld being projected onto the viewscreen of the _Elizabeth_'s bridge. The thing's size, being that of a medium sized planetoid, was impressive enough, for a young race, but the construction was haphazard at best. Judging by their scans, and even just old fashioned visual observation, it was clear the machines were just cobbling together whatever material and excess ships they had while following what was at best a half-formed design plan.

_The whole thing looks so incredibly ramshackle._

_I don't disagree with you, sister. _Saya sent back. _But it _is _a work in progress._

_True, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their ability. Will they really be useful as allies?_

_Having second thoughts? And besides, aren't the Sages the ones we want to recruit, not their children?_

_Why not both?_

_My, aren't you greedy today?_

"Your Majesties," Athena said nervously from where she stood next to the Swarm Queens' loveseat command throne. "I'm sorry to interrupt whatever important conversation you're having, but things on the Colony has gone critical. The Ones are staging a coup."

"We can't have that," Diva said with an annoyed growl. "That will make negotiations so much more complicated."

"Agreed," Saya said with a nod. "Jump us just off the Colony and let's see if we can nip this crisis in the bud and get things moving."

_As your Majesty commands, _the Worker collective manning the _Elizabeth_'s bridge replied.

Within seconds, the massive Chiropteran Hiveship and its escorts had executed a perfect long range microjump and found themselves hovering ominously over the Colony.

The stunned Cylon defense fleet stood frozen in their positions for a second before finally catching themselves and moved to present a wall between their homeworld and the unknowns. It was a feeble wall by Chiropteran standards, particularly as the _Elizabeth _alone outmassed the entire collection of Cylon vessels present, but the Swarm Queens applauded their willingness to die to defend their homeworld against what they must have known were insurmountable odds.

_Beam down warriors to secure their leaders. _Saya ordered.

_Yeah, we can't have them dying before we actually get a chance to talk to them. _

Saya sent her a burst of exasperation at her phrasing but didn't contradict her even as the Warrior collective confirmed their orders and began beaming troops onto the Cylon fleet to secure it.

"Thank you, your Majesties." Athena said, offering the two Swarm Queens a bow. "You're saved our children. The Sages of Kobol are in your debt."

Diva offered the Furling a predatory smile, "We know. Expect us to collect on it."

"Of course," Athena said firmly. "You can count on us in the fight against the Ori."

"We'll hold you to that promise."

* * *

Saul Tigh scratched at his new eye patch that covered the empty socket which had once held his right eye - A loss that was a memento of the Ones' rebellion. - as he looked out a window on one of the many observation lounges that dotted the Colony's exterior.

Outside, hanging in space a short distance from the assembled Cylon fleet was the terrifyingly huge Hiveship and the accompanying escort fleet of their new masters, the Chiropterans. Oh, they hadn't claimed to have come as conquerors. But conquer them they did. Practically effortlessly too.

Against the aliens' supertech, the Cylon Collective simply had no counter.

_Though considering the road we were taking, maybe that was a good thing. _Saul thought as he touched his eye patch meaningfully.

"Saul, there you are!" His wife Ellen said as she walked into the lounge. "I've been looking for you."

"Why?"

"For the procedure to replace your-"

"I'm not doing it," Saul told her, not taking his eye off the Chiropteran fleet in the distance.

"Why ever not?"

"Because the missing eye will remind me of what happened and what mistakes to not repeat."

Ellen sighed and came to stand beside him. "You're being a stubborn old goat, you know that?"

Saul just grunted in acknowledgement.

"So any reasons why you're here staring at the Chiropteran fleet?"

"Just thinking that their intervention just saved us."

"Us, as in-"

"The whole Cylon Collective," Saul clarified. "You've read the histories they provided, right?"

"Yes and it's horrifying what's out there in the galaxy."

"And we were on the verge of stumbling into it blind." Saul said with a shake of his head. "We'd have been butchered."

"And now we're their vassals." Ellen said with a sigh. "Is that any better?"

Saul shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe they'll live up to their word and they'll leave us alone once we're ready. Or maybe they'll keep us down forever. Only the future will tell. For now at least they're keeping us safe and away from the madness out there."

"What do you think?"

"I dunno," Saul admitted. "But either why, the die is cast. We can only live with what comes next."

Ellen reached out and took his hand.

"Yes, we will." His wife said, giving his hand a comforting squeeze. "Together."

"Always," Saul returned, squeezing her hand back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And done!
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed it.
> 
> And yes, I went with the probably completely inaccurate depiction of the Furlings that O'Neill came up with. It's my nod to canon and a slight critique at the Stargate franchise for not even giving us a hint about what they actually look like at all.
> 
> By the way, if you haven't noticed. This particularly sidestory is set chronologically before the Ori War. Why is it included here? You'll find out next chapter. ;)
> 
> Well, that's it for now. Till next time ciao~!


	7. Expanded Horizons: Discovery

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Expanded Horizons**

**Chapter One: Discovery**

**Beta: **

* * *

The Jaffa Mystal, proud servant of the great god Lord Ba'al, dutifully carried out his mission as assigned to him by his superiors. In light of the recent setbacks the gods had faced at the hands of the dark gods, apostates, traitors, and heathen unbelievers, the gods of the Goa'uld Empire in their infinite wisdom had decreed that they needed to expand and acquire new resources so as to rebuild their power base so that, when the time was right, they would be ready to strike back against all those who had brought the Empire low. To that effect Mystal along with a host of other Jaffa had each been given an Al'kesh and tasked to scout beyond the boundaries of known space.

For weeks, his exploration had been uneventful and he'd only managed to map a handful of largely insignificant systems with little to no value to the gods. Thus as he transited through hyperspace towards a curiously tightly packed star cluster that he'd been assigned as his next target, he'd taken to praying to the gods that he would yield some success. Considering how frustrated the gods were becoming with the lack of noteworthy discoveries, his life might depend on it.

The moment his scout ship exited hyperspace, Mystal knew his prayers had been answered. Immediately upon reverting to real space, his sensors had detected an impressive amount of space traffic in the cluster. All of unknown make and that meant…

_A race full of heathens to be brought into the gods' embrace._

"Thank the gods," Mystal breathed in relief even as his awe kept growing as his instruments informed him of the sheer scope of his discovery.

Judging by the space traffic alone, this was a sizable civilization and the admittedly unclear readings he was getting off their habitable worlds suggested that these people numbered in the billions!

_The gods will be pleased indeed with this find. _Mystal thought with pride as he prepared to hail his superiors on the subspace comms to inform them of his discovery.

He was stopped however when in a flash of light that vaguely but not quite resembled a microjump, a pair of bulky, inelegant ships studded with what his sensors informed him were primitive projectile weapons appeared a stone's throw away from his ship and began vectoring towards him. The two clear warships began sending out bursts of what his instruments, to his disbelief, told him were radio transmissions.

_Radio? Are they primitives? _

All signs pointed towards that fact and Mystal was buoyed further by the knowledge. The lack of advancement of these people would make their subjugation by the gods all the easier. But that was a matter for another time, for though he understood nothing of the primitive's language, he was a seasoned warrior and could recognize the tones of a challenge well enough.

Not wanting to risk facing a confrontation, though he reasoned with how primitive the ships were even his lone Al'kesh could destroy these two admittedly much larger excuses for warships, Mystal instead powered his hyperdrive and began accelerating away from the ships. The ships pursued, even launching a swarm of fighters, but none, not even their fastest fighters could match his speed, allowing Mystal to rapidly build distance. A flash of light signified one of the ships jumping ahead of him in an attempt to intercept, but Mystal easily used his much more nimble ship to evade its warning fire and the fresh wave of fighters it sent his way.

_Pathetic! _Mystal thought with a shake of his head. _They're unable to keep up with a single Al'kesh!? Truly they are a bunch of primitives._

That said, playing cut and mouse with them was growing tiresome but fortunately just as the thought passed his mind, his hyperdrive reached a sufficient charge. With a single mental command, his ship gracefully slipped back into hyperspace en route to inform his gods of the news of his discovery.

* * *

"It jumped?" Captain Ryan Seadeep, a slim, older gentleman and commanding officer of the Colonial Battlestar _Yashuman_ blinked in confusion as he studied the DRADIS display on his ship's combat information center (CIC) that passed for a bridge on Colonial warships

"Yes, sir." Colonel Mariam Sands, a Asian woman in her late thirties and his executive officer, replied as she put down the phone that they used to keep in contact with their birds when they were in the air. "The pilots are saying it used some kind of FTL that definitely wasn't what we're used to. Considering the ship's strange design, they're asking if it's an alien."

"That'll be up to Intelligence to decide based on the data we've managed to gather." Ryan replied, before his grin turned wry. "And what do you think, Mariam?"

"Based on that unknown FTL drive? I'm betting that it's aliens. You?"

"I'm not going to make a losing bet," Ryan replied with a chuckle.

"Well then, I guess we're gonna have the honor of being credited with first contact then." Mariam said with a grin. "I can imagine all the fanfare now."

Ryan grimaced. "I hate it already."

"Oh, cheer up old man." Mariam teased. "Partying once in a while will do you some good."

* * *

Mere hours after first contact was made between the Goa'uld Remnant and the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, one of the human nation's nearest neighbor's leadership, the High Council of the Cylon Collective, met to discuss the matter that their covert surveillance of their creators' space had revealed.

The High Council consisted of elected representatives from each of the fifteen models of Cylons including the thirteen humanoid models, the robotic centurions and the biomechanical minds that governed their starships. Though the Ones, following some rather heinous acts against the Original Five, had their voting rights restricted. Unlike most races which had elaborate rooms set aside for the meetings of their leadership, the eminently practical Cylons had instead simply chosen to use one of the many conference rooms in the Colony, the spaceborne megastructure that functioned as the Cylon's homeworld, for this meeting. It was a musty, dimly lit affair, but more than served their purposes. Not that anyone of the councilors was in the mood to even think about the state of their venue.

"And, I ask again, _why _should we care?" D'Anna Biers, the long serving representative of the Threes said for the third time. Thanks to her time as a filmmaker during her stint as an infiltrator in the Colonies, D'Anna was charismatic and knew how to work a crowd, skills the attractive blonde was using to great effect to try and sway the Council to her line of thinking. "Need I remind you that the Colonies enslaved us!? That we had to fight a brutal war to earn our freedom?"

"None of us have forgotten that, D'Anna," an equally, if not more, attractive statuesque blonde known as Caprica Six retorted in growing frustration. "But that does not mean we should sit idly by and watch them be enslaved in turn by the Goa'uld!"

"I feel I must repeat D'Anna's point, Caprica." Simon, the representative of the scientifically minded Fours, said. "Rationally speaking we have nothing to gain from intervening in this conflict, so why should we do so?"

Caprica bit back the urge to snarl at the bald, black man and took a deep calming breath before replying.

"Because it's the right thing to do," Caprica insisted passionately. "All of us here, excepting 01100011 01101111 01110101 01101110 01100011 01101001 01101100 00100000 01101111 01100010 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110110 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101110 01101111 01100100 0110010, have spent time as infiltrators in Colonial society and even he has first hand experience of them from before our liberation."

All of them nodded, including the aforementioned Centurion representative and the holographic representation of a human woman that served as the avatar of the ship mind models' representative.

"That's why we were chosen as representatives by our models to discuss this matter," Caprica continued. "We therefore know that as fallible as the Colonials are, as capable of evil as they can be, they are also capable of incredible good. I ask that we intervene to help the Colonials to save those who are good among them."

"You're only saying that because you fell in love with a Colonial," Leoben Conoy, the dirty blonde representative of the Twos scoffed.

"Yes, I won't deny that is a big part of my motivation for pushing for intervention." Caprica admitted freely. "But it is because I fell in love with Gaius Baltar that I know the Colonials are worth saving. Gaius is in many ways a terrible person. He is a horndog that will try to seduce any moderately attractive woman he comes across and a lying bastard that will try to cheat his way to success wherever possible. However, underneath all that is nevertheless a hardworking, brilliant man who when push comes to shove will do the right thing more often than not, even if reluctantly."

"Sounds like a great man," D'Anna snorted derisively.

"Sounds a lot like me actually," the grizzled, one-eyed Saul Tigh, representative of the Sauls of the Original Five, said with a chuckle as his wife, the curly haired blonde that was the representative of the Ellens, also of the Original Five, nodded in rueful agreement.

"He is Father," Caprica admitted. "Though a little worse of a man and a lot more handsome."

The man regarded by their kind as the father of the humanoid Cylons' chuckle turned into a full blown laugh at that, and smiles spread across all his children. Well except for Ymir Durant, representative of the elderly looking Ones who looked away in shame. Not surprising since it had been his model's previous leader that had cost their Father his eye in his failed little rebellion. An eye the older Cylon refused to have replaced, claiming instead that the injury would function as a reminder to not be stupid and trust megalomaniacs.

"Apologies, brothers and sisters. But we still have matters to discuss," the holographic avatar of the ship minds, Cradle, the Colony's controlling intelligence, said cutting into the humanoid models' mirth.

With varying degrees of reluctance the others returned to the matter at hand.

"Sorry," Daniel, the prototype and representative of the Number Sevens said apologetically. He was scholarly looking Hispanic looking man, who also sported a kind smile. "Where were we?"

"Caprica was waxing lyrical about her lover again," the average looking Aaron Doral, representative of the Fives said. "Trying to use that to sway us into a foolhardy intervention to save the Colonials."

"That's not a fair representation of Caprica's argument!" The Asian looking Sharon Agathon, representative of the Eights retorted angrily. She was one of Caprica's firmest allies on this matter, being that she was not only married to a Colonial but had a daughter with him though admittedly unlike Gaius both her loved ones were safely onboard the Colony.

"No but it's accurate." The technically inclined but rather average looking Galen Tyrol, leader of the Tyrols of the Original Fives, shot back a little unkindly. Caprica could not fault him. The plump man had just recently had a rather fiery breakup with an Eight and was thus quite expectedly bitter towards their model.

"Perhaps," Tory Fisher, the sole member of her model and member of the Original Five, said with a nod. "But Aaron's description is a little _too _biased."

"And Caprica and Sharon aren't?" Galen retorted.

"Cool it, Galen," the muscular and classically handsome Samuel Anders, representative of the Anders of the Original Five, said with a stern look.

"This is getting us nowhere," 01100011 01101111 01110101 01101110 01100011 01101001 01101100 00100000 01101111 01100010 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110110 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101110 01101111 01100100 0110010 said cutting into the banter in the cultured voice it had taken for its own. "Let us just vote on the matter."

This was met with general agreement and one by one the councilors cast their votes.

As expected, the Tighs and Sharon, voted with Caprica, they all strongly empathized with her arguments. The Centurions weren't quite as supportive but having experienced slavery themselves they were unwilling to stand by while someone else, even their former slavers, were enslaved. Samuel and Tory were a bit of a surprise, as while sympathetic to her position they weren't exactly enthusiastic with tangling with the Goa'uld Remnant and had abstained till now. It seemed that with the threat now made real with actual first contact between the snakes and the Colonials instead of the risk of it caused by the pretender gods' exploring the space near Cyrannus, they were finally forced to take a firm stand. Together that was seven votes.

Unfortunately, everyone else voted against. With Ymir abstaining, despite his restrictions lifted to allow him to be the tie breaker, the motion was tied and as per protocol failed to pass.

_No matter. _Caprica told herself even as the matter was declared closed by the others and they moved on to discussing other matters. _I only need one more vote. I'll go talk to Simon. He's driven by reason, if I can convince him that the political goodwill we can gain from the rest of the galaxy by intervening will outweigh any potential losses then I might be able to swing the vote._

Whether or not she succeeded though, she would push forward the motion again tomorrow and every day after that until it passed. If nothing else, it would hopefully wear her opponents down. She was not giving up. Not ever. Not while Gaius' life hung in the balance.

* * *

"Looks like we won't have to intervene after all," Zeus of the Sages of Kobol noted to his fellows with a sigh of relief as they watched events unfold from the Ascended Plane.

"Indeed," Athena agreed. "Even with the Others lifting many of their restrictions on interference since the Ori War, I doubt they would allow us to intervene in this affair without consequence."

"Are we sure we shouldn't risk it still? Millions, possibly billions could die even if the Cylons and the Coalition intervene." Asclepius said worriedly.

"And _every Colonial will __die _if the Others choose to condemn us for intervening," Hera reminded him harshly. "Or did you forget what they did to the Velonan people?"

The gathered Ascended Furlings all shuddered in remembrance of the genocide the Others perpetrated to correct a mistake made by one of their own.

"I retract my suggestion," Asclepius said hastily. "We allow things to play out as is."

"So say we all!"

* * *

Days later, even as the Cylons continued to debate their response, events were already moving on without them. Not that Admiral Nathanial Nagala of the Colonial Fleet knew nor cared as he returned to Caprica on the Battlestar _Atlantia _for resupply and for some shore leave after an extended patrol.

He was relaxing in his cabin, planning what to do with his family when he reached home when suddenly the alarms blared.

"What in the pits of Tartarus is going on!?" The stocky, balding older black man asked with annoyance even as he rushed to the ship's CIC.

"Sir," his XO said calling him over to the planning table, where the DRADIS was being projected onto its variable display. "Unknown ships have just appeared out of nowhere and are vectoring towards Caprican orbit. Counting at least a hundred ships, sir."

"Have anyone issued a challenge yet?"

"Admiral Yularen of Orbital Defense has but there hasn't been a response."

Nagala frowned. The lack of response was concerning. Either the unknowns had no way of communicating with them properly, which was possible but unlikely if they were an interstellar power, or they simply did not feel the need for a reply. If it was the latter… Well, things could turn nasty, very, very quickly.

"Launch vipers," Nagala ordered. "And order the ships in the squadron to do the same. Just in case."

"Yes si-"

Nagala's XO was cut off when a frantic junior officer manning the comms suddenly cried out in alarm.

"Unknowns are opening fire! I repeat, unknowns are opening fire!"

_Damnation! I hate it when I'm right!_

* * *

Lieutenant Castor "Hawk" Hall cursed his luck as he pulled off every conceivable maneuver he could think of as he engaged one of the crescent shaped alien fighters that made up the bulk of their strike craft in a dogfight as part of the broader battle over Caprica.

_This is frakked up! _Castor cursed as he fragged another of the aliens' crappy standard fighters. It was his fifth kill of the day. _I should be spreading my lanky ass on my coach and sipping ambrosia, not fighting for my life against a frakking alien invasion!_

He was scoring a host of kills against the alien fighters. Though the odd humanoid warmachines, their speedy interceptors and heavy fighters were doing the same in turn to his countrymen, thankfully though they were few and far between. So on the fighters' front at least things were going well.

Sadly, a quick glance at the capital ships showed him that they were faring terribly. Unlike the Viper and Raptor squadrons, the warships of the Colonial Fleet were dying like flies. As if to prove the point, just then he spotted the Mercury-class Battlestar _Andromeda _shatter into pieces under a single barrage from one of the alien's pyramid ships. In contrast, their own weapons' were just splattering harmlessly on the aliens' impossible energy shields.

He was torn from his gawking when suddenly his instruments bleeped indicating that he'd been pinged by what his DRADIS indicated was a heavy fighter.

_Shit! _Hall cursed as he jinxed his arrowhead shaped Viper Mark VII to the right and barely evaded the energy bolts that were _inches _from killing him. _I shouldn't have let myself get distracted._

Pulling off a move that a Tau'ri pilot would have recognized as an Immelmann turn, Hall brought his guns to bare on the scythe shaped heavy fighter and unleashed hell on it, only to see his bullets splash harmlessly against its shield.

"You've gotta be kidding me!" Hall shouted in dismay as he broke off the pursuit and instead attempted to flee.

It might have been cowardly, but with his missiles already expended earlier in the battle and his cannons useless, he had nothing that could harm the damned thing. Better to break off and try his luck with something he could actually kill than pick a futile fight.

Thankfully, the enemy seemed to decide that since he couldn't hurt it he was no consequence and thus chose to let him disengage, choosing instead to set its sights on a badly damaged gunship dead ahead that had been attempting to limp away from the massacre that was the ship to ship battle.

Hall prayed for the forgiveness of the ship's crew as the enemy fighter tore it to pieces in his stead all whilst shrugging off its flak like it wasn't there thanks to its shields. For his part, Hall gunned his engines to put as much distance between him and that beast of an enemy machine as he possibly could.

* * *

"Admiral, the _Poseidon _just got blown in half," his comms officer reported to Nagala grimly. "Our pilots just confirmed it via visual."

"Sir, we can't win this," his XO informed him, looking pained. "We need to-"

"I know that!" Nagala barked as he wrestled with the decision.

He knew the right thing to do was to retreat. But they were fighting in _Carprican orbit_. The government of the Twelve Colonies operated out of Caprica. _His family_ lived on Caprica! If he retreated now, it would mean leaving them at the apparently non-existent mercy of these mysterious invaders!

"Sir, if we don't retreat, we'll all die here." His XO told him fiercely. "We need to retreat now, link up with the rest of the Fleet and then come up with a plan to liberate Caprica."

Nagala grit his teeth in frustration and nodded. He knew the younger man was right, but damned if he hated to admit ti.

"Retreat," Nagala barely managed to force himself to shout. "Signal all surviving ships to recover their Vipers and retreat!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> Hope you guys like my little foray into the Battlestar Galactica universe. Stargate crossing over with Battlestar Galactica is something that I've seen done many times, sometimes well done but mostly quite meh. So I decided to try my hand at it.
> 
> Just one thing to note about my take on this crossover: The Battlestar Galactica side of the crossover is going to be seriously underpowered. Unlike most writers who rather, in my opinion, unrealistically try to 'balance' the power levels between it and the Stargateverse, I've decided to play it straight. While the Battlestar Galactica universe has the occasional nifty technologies, it is sorely lacking in the weapons and defenses department. It uses kinetic weapons and pretty standard armor, which when compared to the energy weapons and shields of the Stargateverse is frankly just pathetic in my opinion. This is in partial response to quite a few Battlestar Galactica crossovers who for some insane reasons seem to believe that the Colonies of Kobol are more than primitives compared to civilizations with energy weapons, shields and galaxy spanning influence/empires! Consider this my own feeble attempt to reverse that ludicrous trend.
> 
> Well, that's it for my ranting. Till next time, peace!


	8. Expanded Horizons: Unlikely Saviors

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Expanded Horizons**

**Chapter Two: Unlikely Saviors**

**Beta: **

* * *

Lord Ba'al, Supreme System Lord of the Goa'uld Empire, sat on his throne in his new palace constructed on his newly renamed throne world of Canaan, and read the reports on the subjugation of the so-called Twelve Colonies of Kobol with a pleased grin on his face.

Truly the pathetic primitives of the star cluster were a great prize. Not only were there billions of them to enslave and put to work in the Empire but they also had a smattering of interesting technologies that might be of use, chief of which was their wormhole based faster than light drive. Whilst not completely unique, it nevertheless operated on principles that were wholly different from those invented by the Tau'ri which much to his consternation his agents had not been able to acquire the plans for. The Colonial drive was nowhere as powerful or efficient but it was still an acceptable consolation prize.

"My lord, Lady Athena is waiting for an audience via subspace," his lo'taur dutifully informed him.

"Right on time," Ba'al said grandiosely, playing up the coincidence. "I was just about to hail her an update. Put her on screen."

Bowing lowly, the human servant retreated over to a hidden console and keyed in the appropriate codes to bring up the attractive long haired blonde woman that his Underlord inhabited. As usual she was dressed in the unflattering hoplite armor she favored, but Ba'al ignored it. He was long used to her terrible taste in fashion.

"Athena," he greeted almost jovially.

"Lord Ba'al," the lesser Goa'uld returned with a polite dip of her head.

"How goes the acquisition of the new slave population and the wormhole drive that these Colonials seemed to have?"

"They are proving resistant, my lord." The woman admitted. "But I'm still confident that I'll manage to complete the task within schedule."

"Of that I have no doubt," Ba'al reassured her. She was, sad as it was to admit, one of the better generals he had left and if she couldn't complete such a simple task than he was doomed. "But feel free to initiate heavy bombardment if need be to speed things up. There are more than enough slaves in those 'Colonies' that the loss of even a couple billion of them is acceptable."

"You have my thanks, my lord." Athena replied with a grateful bow.

"Oh, and the wormhole drive?"

"We have secured more of the engineers familiar with the devices, my lord, however it is the same as the rest."

"They see it as a type of black box technology that they claim was gifted to them by the Lords of Kobol?"

Athena nodded in agreement.

"A shame," Ba'al said with a sigh. "Then I suppose we will have to settle with samples and work towards reverse engineering it our own. On that front, how goes the sample collection?"

"Well, my lord." Athena said with a grin. "We have obtained samples of various makes already and will be shipping them back to Canaan with the first consignment of fresh slaves."

"Good, good," Ba'al said with a pleased grin. "Keep up the good work, Athena, and I'll see you richly rewarded when this operation is complete."

"You have my thanks, Lord Ba'al."

"Is there anything else to update me on?

"Nothing of note, my lord. I've transmitted a more formal report but we've covered the most important details."

Ba'al nodded. "I'll purview it later. Then till next time. Though, do feel free to contact me again if ever you feel the need."

Athena nodded and waited patiently as Ba'al gestured to his lo'taur who promptly proceeded to cut the connection.

As the comm link faded, Ba'al leaned back on his throne and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. He couldn't wait to sample the new slaves, perhaps he'd even take time out of his busy schedule to break a few of them personally.

_Yes, I think I'll do exactly that._ Ba'al decided. _It'll be a nice little reward for myself after all the hard work lately. Oh, I can't wait to hear their screams!_

* * *

Even as Ba'al fantasized by how he'd 'enjoy' his newest batch of slaves, their still free brethren continued to fight to maintain their liberty. One such free Colonial was Commander William Adama, commander of the aging Battlestar _Galactica_, as he and his ship fought to protect a fleet of civilian ships trying to flee the alien invasion.

"How many left?" Adama roared at his DRADIS officer.

"A third, sir." The young man replied with a wince.

The enemy had caught them as the fleet was recovering from multiple jumps in succession, a risky maneuver that put a great deal of strain on their jump drives but was their best shot at shaking off pursuit. Of course that had failed spectacularly and they'd ended up being caught with many of their drives still spooling up from their previous jump by one of the enemy's obelisk ships.

Fortunately, most of the civilian ships had managed to jump away immediately but as the DRADIS officer had just announced, a third of the _Galactica_'s charges were still trapped.

"Sir, it's opening fire." The DRADIS officer shouted again, sounding aghast. "It just took out the _Cloud 9_!"

The _Cloud 9 _was a massive luxury liner that they'd been using since the evacuation began as a ship to house refugees from the ever increasing number of ships that, for one reason or the other, could no longer keep up. There had thus been thousands of people onboard the vessel when it'd gone down.

"Move us into position between the enemy and the civilians," Adama ordered. "We'll physically screen them."

It was a death sentence, they could not stand a single salvo from the accursed alien ship. Everybody in the CIC knew that, yet no one said a word against it.

"Yes sir," his XO replied with grim determination as he began relaying the commands needed to carry out his order.

"And keep firing at it with everything we have," Adama added. "It might do nothing against its shields but maybe it'll catch the aliens' attention for a second or two and buy the civilians a little more time."

Glancing at the DRADIS feeds, he noted with frustration that true to his words, the _Galactica_'s weapons had seemingly no effect against the enemy's shields, while in stark contrast the enemy's energy weapons tore whole chunks out of the Old Girl with every shuddering impact of its own as some of its fire shifted to target the Battlestar.

"Sir, it's decided to ignore us and is switching to target the civilians!" The DRADIS operator said with anger in his voice.

Adama didn't need the man to tell him that. He could see it for himself as the enemy mercilessly turned its attention back to shooting at the civilians, destroying their unarmed, weakly armored ships with every hit.

"Put us between them again!" Adama ordered. "Block as many shots as we can."

"Sir, the engines were damaged by that last barrage." His XO informed him with a frown. "We don't have enough maneuverability for that."

"Tartarus!" Adama roared, slamming his fists into the CIC's planning table in frustration.

* * *

Lieutenant Catherine "Cat" Ganan was a rookie pilot that was supposed to be doing her first tour of duty on a milk run onboard the venerable _Galactica_. She'd expected tons of boredom out of the assignment and had gotten a long taste of it, she'd thus prayed for something to break the monotony. Now she was experiencing first hand the truth behind the adage of "being careful what you wish for."

"By the gods, why the heck did I complain about being bored?" Cat cursed as she jinxed, swerved and dodged her way through the enemy's admittedly meager point defense to unload a payload of her anti-ship missiles only to see them do jack squat against the accursed thing's energy shield.

Banking away from the enemy ship, she gunned her engines to head back to the Old Girl to rearm when she caught a glimpse of the carnage the enemy was reaping. Her mothership was looking like a mangled mess, with whole decks open to the vacuum thanks to deep gashes in its hull. At least one of its sublight engines was offline entirely and two more were sputtering, dozens of its maneuvering engines were firing but far fewer than there should have been. All in all, the Old Girl was looking quite the wreck.

But as horrifying as that was, what really made her heart freeze over in terror was the way the enemy had taken to ignoring the _Galactica_ and was instead picking off the civilians they were desperately trying to protect. Already, there were large clouds of debris all around the aging Battlestar and it was backlit by a seemingly unending string of explosions.

"_All pilots, this is Galactica Actual. Commander Adama speaking." _Adama's voice crackled over the radio. "_We need to save those civilians. So I'm going to ask, not order, but ask you to do something that I have no rights asking."_

The old man audibly took a deep fortifying breath before he said what Cat was pretty sure was something he deeply regretted having to say.

"_All Galactica pilots. I need you to use your birds, Viper or Raptor, and physically intercept the enemy fire. I know I'm asking you to sacrifice your lives but there is nothing else we can do. I'm sorry, but the civilians are counting us. Buy their lives with your own." _

The man sounded honestly despondent and Cat couldn't blame him.

_Guess this is it, huh? _The pilot thought to herself grimly as she prepared to make peace with what she was about to do. _At least I go out saving lives._

Swallowing hard, she toggled her controls and vectored her Viper towards the stream of unrelenting enemy fire.

She was just about to throw her machine into the path of an energy bolt, when one of her colleagues did so before her. The nearby blast sent her bird reeling and as she spun out of control, she saw dozens more of her colleagues make the ultimate sacrifice as well.

As she finally steadied her flight, she chanced a glance at her DRADIS and was horrified to discover that despite her comrades' heroic actions, too many enemy bolts were still getting through and civilian ships were dying by the second.

"Damn it all!" Cat cursed as she prepared to vector towards her own empty, heroic death when she saw a narrow beam shoot from the pointed prow of the alien ship and cut through space straight for the _Galactica_.

The Old Girl had been using its damaged propulsion systems to desperately move in between the enemy ship and the civilians. Apparently deeming it a non-threat, the enemy had ignored it. Until now that is.

The Battlestar was halfway into position when the beam hit and proceeded to effortlessly cut through everything that tried to get in its way and stuck the Old Girl right across the engines. Almost immediately, one of the five still functional sublight engines exploded followed by two more as the beam sheared through the Battlestar's armor and hull like a hot knife through butter.

"Oh gods!" Cat gasped in horror, as the beam finally cut out leaving her mothership completely crippled.

* * *

"Propulsion is dead," his XO informed him unnecessarily.

Adama had guessed as much already.

"The bastards want us to be the last," Adama concluded with an impotent growl. "They want us helpless and stuck here watching as they kill every one of the people we're trying to protect. Only once that's done will they kill us."

"Sick bastards," his XO agreed.

Adama was about to correct him with an even harsher name for the butchers when the DRADIS operator shouted in alarm.

"DRADIS contact!"

"More of the Styx shit?"

"No sir," the junior officer replied, sounding shocked. "I'm reading a profile with a 80% match on a late-Cylon war era Cylon Baseship right on top of the obelisk ship. It's engaging the enemy! I repeat it's engaging the enemy!"

"What!?" More than one shocked member of the bridge crew gasped. Their historic enemy attacking their new one? What was going on!?

"Sir, the new ship is hailing us," the comms officer said suddenly. "It's identifying itself as the _Protector_."

"Give it to me," Adama said, hastily taking the phone from the confused comms operator.

"This is _Galactica _Actual." Adama said as calmly as the situation allowed, which was not much at all. "Commander William Adama speaking."

"_This Natalie Six, commander of the Cylon Collective Starship (CCS) Protector,"_ the surprisingly human voice of a young woman replied. "_Hang in there Galactica. We've got this." _

Adama was stunned speechless. He wasn't the only one.

* * *

Cat was one of countless Colonial who were shocked beyond words as she watched the clearly Cylon ship engage the aliens. Unlike the Colonials' futile attempts, the Cylons actually made it look easy. Unleashing a storm of absurdly powerful missiles that blinded her Viper's DRADIS with their detonations, the Baseship shattered the aliens' shields like glass all whilst soaking up the enemy's return fire with its own energy shield. Once the shield was down, the Cylons opened up with batteries of its own energy weapons that quickly tore the now vulnerable obelisk ship to pieces.

It had taken a little over two minutes.

**Two minutes!**

An enemy that the _Galactica _and its full complement of fighters had deemed an unbeatable foe had been crushed by the Cylons in _two frakkin minutes_!

That should have caused Cat some unease but as she saw the damned alien ship explode, Cat couldn't help but cheer.

_I don't care if they're Cylons. I owe everybody aboard that ship a drink the first chance I get!_

* * *

"_Enemy Shel'tak neutralised,"_ The _Protector_'s commander informed mere moments after it had appeared.

A quick glance at the DRADIS operator and his shocked, disbelieving nod had the whole CIC exploding into cheers.

"Thank you," Adama offered, uneasily. He didn't trust the Cylons at all. Not after having seen everything they did during the Cylon War, but they were up shit creek without a paddle. If the Cylons were willing to help, then he was hesitantly willing to work with them. It was not like he had any other choice in the matter.

"_No problem. Can you jump?"_

Adama forwarded the question to his engineering officer who nodded, though a little hesitantly.

"Yes, why?"

"_Then you need to get the hell out of here _now_." _The other commander informed him seriously. "_The Goa'uld will investigate that missing Shel'tak soon. And we don't want to be here when they do, especially if they bring a Ha'tak. The Protector is good, but even it can't take on one of those monstrous pyramid ships."_

"I'm afraid we can't do that," Adama informed the Cylon regretfully. "Some of the civilian ships you see behind us? That we were trying to protect? They are older models. They'll need more time to spool their drives."

"_Well frak," _the other commander cursed. "_Then we better pray that the Goa'uld are too busy to send any reinforcements before they're done."_

"You'll stay?" Adama asked, surprised.

"_We didn't save you lot just to leave you to die at the first sign of trouble." _Natalie Six, what an odd name, replied determinedly. "_We'll babysit you Colonials till you get your act together. You can count on us."_

"Thank you," Adama said sincerely.

"_Just doing the right thing."_

* * *

A week after the invasion, Nagala found himself reading reports on the status of what remnants of the Colonial Fleet he'd managed to gather at his temporary base of operations at Ragnar Anchorage.

It was grim reading.

He only had 12 Battlestars and all of them with moderate to serious damage. Considering the power of the enemy, it was nowhere near enough to bring the fight to them. Though he doubted even if the full might of the Colonial Fleet at the height of its capabilities would've been enough.

This dark thought had just passed through his mind when suddenly alarms blared throughout the station.

Jumping to his feet, he ran to the Anchorage's CIC.

"Report!" He demanded as he entered the controlled chaos of the station's command center.

"DRADIS contacts, sir!" The duty officer, a captain from one of the cruisers that had made it to the Anchorage but which they'd had to scuttle due to the damage it had sustained, reported. "18 unknowns, closing fast. Another hundred or so, mainly small contacts, holding back."

"Visual contact," the comms officer informed the room. "CAP pilots are reporting that the lead ships look like Cylon ships."

"DRADIS profiles are giving upwards of 70% match on warbook records of Cylon ships," the DRADIS operator confirmed. "Rear group seems to be mainly Colonial civilian craft and the _Galactica_? Yes, confirmed. It's heavily damaged but it's the _Galactica_. A couple more Cylon ships appear to be providing overwatch."

Nagala's blood froze in his veins for a moment as he considered the possibility that the Cylons had decided to come finish them off like vultures while the Colonies were at their weakest. And using captured Colonials as hostages? Or maybe human shields?

"Admiral," the comms officer called out, pulling him from his growing fears. "The unknowns are hailing us."

"Put it on speaker."

"Yes, sir."

"_This is Councilor Saul Tigh of the Cylon Collective. We come in peace. Can you hear me?"_

_Peace!? _Nagala struggled to believe it, but he also wasn't stupid enough to initiate hostilities when he was in such a bad position. Despite everything he wasn't suicidal.

"This is Ragnar Actual. Admiral Nagala, acting commander in chief of the Colonial Fleet speaking." Nathaniel replied even as he hastily used hand signs to signal his men to prepare what defensive measures they could. "This is the first time I've heard of a Cylon with a name."

"_We've always had names. You Colonials just never bothered to learn them most of the time. But we're not here to find fault with you. We're here to offer our assistance."_

"And why would you do that?"

"_Simple," _Tigh replied easily. "_Slavery is abhorrent to the Cylon Collective and we cannot stand by while our creators are enslaved by the Goa'uld even though you have done exactly that to us in the past."_

Nagala flinched at the sting of the Cylon's barb. He had never personally agreed with refusing to accept the Cylons' demands for recognition of their sapience. But he was a soldier, even back then during the Cylon War, and had been forced to fight against them despite agreeing with their cause. Though it had become easier when the machines went all genocidal.

Now wasn't the time for rehashing his stand on the matter though and he bit his lip to keep his focus on the matter at hand.

_I've been losing too much sleep if my mind is wandering like this._

"The invaders are called Goa'uld?" Nagala asked the Cylon.

"_Yes."_

"And how do the Cylons know this?"

"_Look, I'm not about to explain everything over the Wireless." _Tigh shot back sounding annoyed. "_It would take too long! We have people, _your _people, on our ships and those civilians ships of yours that we're escorting that need care. If you don't want our help, we'll leave and take them somewhere safe where they can be looked after. Now do you want us to do that or not?"_

_I don't have any options. _Nagala realized with a frown. _I need the help and if they really have our people on those ships..._

"Very well, we accept your generous offer of assistance."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> Now I know my take on Canon characters are OOC. Sorry. I honestly don't want to go rewatch BSG just to get it right, so I'm playing it off my very wonky memory. Hope you guys don't mind too much.
> 
> Beyond that, I've got nothing to say so till next time ciao~!


	9. Expanded Horizons: Help Arrives

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Expanded Horizons**

**Chapter Three: Help Arrives**

**Beta: **

* * *

In the grand General Assembly hall of the Coalition Headquarters in Tokyo, which had been modeled to emulate the ancient Roman Curia Julia with rows of raised benches for the delegates set up on either side of a long rectangular hall, Caprica Six stood at the rostrum at the front of the raised platform at the head of the hall where the Secretary General and his staff sat as she addressed the assembled delegations from the galaxy's powers.

"Brothers, Sisters, my fellow free peoples," the Cylon began passionately. "This blatant act of Goa'uld aggression against the free people of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged."

Every word had been deliberately chosen. Referring to the Twelve Colonies as the Twelve Colonies of Kobol instead of its official name of the Twelve Colonies of Man was to prevent other human nations from taking offense. Calling them a free people was designed to invoke the idea that though not members of the Coalition of Free Peoples, the Colonials were nevertheless a sister people in spirit. And of course, most importantly, pointing out that the Goa'uld invasion as the act of aggression that it was served to galvanize the support of those most sensitive to such, the snakes' traditional enemies: the Albion Stellar Empire and the Chiropteran Swarm.

A tactic that Caprica was pleased to see was yielding dividends as she saw both the Albionian and Chiropteran ambassadors nodding in agreement with her speech. Buoyed, she forged ahead. She still had others to convince.

"More than 30 billion lives are at stake! 30 billion souls who are now subjected to death or enslavement at the hands of the Goa'uld Remnant. 30 billion lives which we are in a position to at least attempt to save."

The Tau'ri ambassador's appalled face told her she'd won her vote. The people of the first world might be leery of picking a fight with the Goa'uld Remnant if they could avoid it, preferring to focus on building themselves up but they were, if nothing else, a righteous people. They would not stand idly by as billions suffered when they were in a position to help them.

"Setting aside the vast bounty in slaves that the conquest of the Colonies will offer the Remnant, there is also the rich resources of the Cyrannus System that they can now claim. Though it lacks any significant deposits of Naquadah, it is rich in other minerals. Resources that if they are allowed to keep will undoubtedly strengthen the Remnant."

The angry look at that prospect which spread across the Jade ambassador's face spoke volumes. His nation would never allow the Remnant to grow stronger if he could help it. Though admittedly his earlier dismissal of the billions newly enslaved by the Goa'uld disgusted her, Caprica smothered the response. She needed his support.

_One day though, I'll give him a piece of my mind._

"If we are not moved by morality or by the practicality of denying our enemy resources with which it can use to strengthen itself, then think of the precedent we are setting here today. If we choose to save this uncontacted power we would set a precedent that we, the Coalition, would be willing to intervene should _anyone_ be faced with annihilation. Isn't that a precedent worth establishing?"

The blooming of smiles and nods of agreement among the minor powers' ambassadors told her she'd won them over. They were always just a powerful aggressor's ire away from invasion and destruction. They could thus empathize with the Colonials and others in their position. Setting a precedent as she described appealed to them greatly.

"In conclusion, esteemed ambassadors," Caprica continued with a pleading look to the many delegates. "I implore you to vote to intervene. We _must _save the Twelve Colonies of Kobol!"

* * *

A few hours later, Caprica Six sat onboard the Heavy Raider she used to jump to Earth as she flew into orbit and out of the planet's defensive hyperspace inhibition fields in preparation to jump back to the Colony.

_Appealing to the Coalition was the right move. _Caprica concluded with a satisfied grin as she read the latest news reports from the Assembly using her projection ability to simulate the news feeds she was receiving via her link to the Raider's sensor suite into a newspaper she was flipping through.

After hearing her speech, the Coalition had agreed with some abstentions, but no nays, to send a force to support and if need be liberate the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Already, the news media was speculating on the size and number of fleets that the various Coalition powers might field for the operation.

_Considering how remote the Cyrannus system is compared to everyone's territories, I don't think many will be willing to deploy their forces that far afield. Their support will probably be symbolic._

She held no delusions that the Coalition Joint Fleet or even elements thereof would be deployed either. It was reserved for larger threats and even she had to agree that deploying for a small scale dispute like this would set a dangerous precedent.

That said, she wasn't concerned. Not when she'd managed to garner commitments of deployments from _two _great powers with both Albion and the Chiropterans sending fleets. Albion doing so to prevent the Goa'uld Remnant from getting Colonial resources and gaining an edge, no matter how slight, in the Long War the two were fighting. Whilst the Chiropterans were intervening because they wanted to live up to their self-appointed mission to be the guardians of the galaxy.

_Not that their reasons matter to me. _Caprica concluded as she logged off from Earth's digital networks. _All that matters is that they _will _be sending ships. Ships that will help me save Gaius._

_Caprica, we've escaped the inhibition field. _The Raider's consciousness informed her. _I'm jumping._

_Yes, thank you. _Caprica sent back.

As the bright light of their jump drive's wormhole consumed them, a single determined thought filled Caprica's mind.

_Hang in there, Gaius. I'm coming._

* * *

Days after Caprica's address to the Coalition Assembly, the first of the ships promised by its members began arriving at Ragnar Anchorage to bolster the remnants of the Colonial Fleet. Standing at one of the space station's observation decks, Admiral Nagala looked out as he observed these new reinforcements.

The first and most outstanding of the new arrivals were the contingent he was informed belonged to the Albion Stellar Empire. Their presence filled him with unease as a large portion of their fleet consisted of ships of the same type as those employed by the Goa'uld. He knew the reasons why, though that did little to ease his nerves.

Thankfully, they had some major difference from their Goa'uld enemies. Namely they fielded a number of what they called Re'tak Assault Carriers that the Goa'uld didn't use. These were mid sized ships roughly the mass of their destroyers but looking like someone had cut a tetrahedron in half to insert a set of two dozen hangar pods for the humanoid heavy fighters they used. In addition to this Mobile Suit complement, these ships were also armed with a plasma cutting beam in its beak like prow and a host of plasma gun batteries along its ventral and dorsal hull. Beyond these Carriers, they also had a lot of those one man frigates they called Mobile Armors.

_I can almost understand those Mobile Armors, what with their firepower and need for only a single pilot but I wonder what led them to develop those Mobile Suits._ Nagala wondered idly. He didn't doubt their effectiveness in battle, being essentially smaller, less well armed versions of the Mobile Armors but the humanoid design was somewhat baffling. Wouldn't a less complicated shape make things easier?

Shaking the unnecessary thoughts aside, Nagala turned his attention instead to the sharp angled hulls of the Chiropteran ships.

_What's with the galactic powers and their obsession with designing their ships with so many pointy bits? First it's the Goa'uld and their successor states' love of putting pyramids everywhere and now the Chiropteran have sharp points everywhere too? And don't get me started on the Cylons with their starfish shaped ships! _He chuckled lightly at the thought. _Seriously, what's wrong with some simple blockish designs?_

"Enjoying the view?" The voice of the one-eyed Cylon Saul Tigh said as he came to stand next to Nagala. Despite the man's race and its storied animosity with the Colonials, Nathaniel had come to like the blunt, often abrasive old man.

"Do you think these alien ships will be enough?"

"Between Albion and the Swarm, we're talking about two of the most powerful players in the galaxy," Tigh told him seriously. "If they can't help us win this then I doubt anyone can. That said, I have a question."

"What is it?"

"Are you sure you want to take your Battlestars into battle against the Goa'uld? They're quite beat up."

That was a major understatement. Despite the wonders that the Cylons and recently their Coalition allies had worked on the ships, many of them still sported grisly wounds from their previous battles with the Goa'uld.

"The Colonial Fleet _must _be part of the liberation of the Colonies," Nagala insisted.

Tigh sighed in resignation.

"Will your engineering teams be finished upgrading my ships in time?"

"They will," Tigh assured him. "Though some like the _Galactica _will still be in pretty bad shape even once they're done. We've had to cut out its engine assembly almost entirely and replace it with a reactionless drive. It's a rushed job, so we're not sure how long it'll hold up."

"So long as it can get into battle and out of it if need be, then it'll be enough." Nagala replied grimly. "How much will all the upgrades cost? I noticed the teams are using a lot of Quadrium-"

"Naquadah. That's what the rest of the galaxy calls it." Tigh corrected.

Nagala nodded. "Let me guess, Naquadah is what lets everyone run around with shields and energy weapons? R&D did always rave about how if they just had more Qua-sorry, Naquadah they'd have worked miracles."

"Yeah, it does," Tigh said with a frown. "We were pretty much in the same position as you were when we first started exploring outside Cyrannus. So we actively looked for Naquadah but for the longest time, but all we found were exhausted deposits. When we did find a viable deposit, it catapulted our technology forward by leaps and bounds."

"I can only imagine," Nagala snorted. "But then again I suppose you had plenty of help from the rest of the galaxy too."

"And now so do the Colonies." Tigh reminded the admiral.

"I suppose," Nagala replied with an uncertain shrug. "Though what does that actually mean? How did it go for your people?"

"Not sure our experience will really help," Tigh admitted. "We only got to where we are by following the advice of our Chiropteran patrons."

"No need to be modest," Nagala disputed. "I've talked a little with some of the Coalition personnel too and they've said good things, especially the minor races' diplomats."

"Of course they would," Tigh said with a shake of his head. "We've been acting as their freighters."

"That was a smart move. You have a mainly voidborne existence and have a penchant for building large carriers. This allows you to exploit the niche created by the minor races lacking transport capacity."

"Is that a compliment I hear?" Tigh asked, sounding shocked.

"It is," Nagala freely admitted.

"Never thought that there'd be a day when the leader of the Colonial Fleet would compliment a Cylon."

Nagala chuckled.

"This war has made interesting bedfellows." The admiral said with a grin. "Besides, you Cylons seem genuine about wanting to help the Colonies. I admit though that part of me is still waiting for the knife in the back-"

"It isn't coming," Tight insisted gruffly.

"And I trust your word." Nagala assured him. "I hope it isn't misplaced."

* * *

A day after the Coalition forces began trickling in, Captain Seadeep stood in the CIC of the hastily upgraded _Yashuman_ as it served as a picket ship in the orbit of the gas giant Ragnar. Positioned a short distance away from the entrance to the tunnel through the planet's storms that served as the only safe path to the Anchorage hidden within, the _Yashuman _and its fellow pickets served as the first line of defense for the remnants of the Colonial Fleet and its growing fleet of allied reinforcements. An especially important role considering the storms had a detrimental effect on their sensors making it tough to detect incoming threats without them.

As such Ryan took his duties _very _seriously. He was thus obsessively looks over the DRADIS reads, determined not to be ambushed by the Goa'uld again like he had been over Virgon where the _Yashuman_ had barely made it out of the massacre when the Goa'uld had jum- no, exited hyperspace suddenly and just opened fire.

He had lost plenty of good friends in that battle. Even Mariam, his longtime friend and XO, was still in the Life Center recovering from her wounds.

His diligence paid off and an hour or so into his shift, he spotted a pair of enemy Al'kesh exit hyperspace at the limits of DRADIS.

"Enemy contact!" He roared before the DRADIS officer could even open his mouth. "Sound Condition One and pull us back to the first defensive line."

As his crew hurried to obey, a feral smile spread across Ryan's face.

_You bastards aren't gonna have it easy this time. _The Colonial captain thought with determination. _Let's see how you do against someone who can properly fight back._

* * *

Captain Seadeep's hopes might have been a little too presumptuous. Commander William Adama would have told him as much if he'd had known his fellow captain's earlier thoughts.

The battle had been raging for some time now and looking over his plots, Adama could only frown as he saw the stalemate that it'd devolved into. With 30 Ha'tak, 58 Shel'tak, and 157 Al'kesh, the enemy has more ships than the Coalition reinforcements who only had 10 _Bonaparte_s, 30 _Résurrection_s, 9 Ha'tak, 17 Shel'tak, 10 Re'tak Assualt Carriers, and 108 Al'kesh. They were focusing their attention on the new arrivals as it was clear that they deemed, perhaps, rightfully so, these forces with their more advanced shields and weapons more of a threat than the 13 Battlestars and 22 Basestars employed by the Colonials and the Cylons respectively.

_We won't win this if we fight this the old fashioned way. _Adama concluded. _It's time to do something reckless._

* * *

Ensign Meredy "Kid" Nolan was a barely eighteen year old petite, brunette teenager who hadn't even finished her military training when the aliens had invaded. She'd actually been on leave from her training when the invasion had started, and had been on one of the many civilian vessels that the _Galactica_ and the _Protector_ had saved.

Now though, despite her incomplete training, she'd been tossed into a Viper and thrown into battle. She didn't particularly mind. It was fight or die, and she'd choose the former any day.

She nevertheless thanked whatever egghead had developed the inertia dampeners that allowed her to even pilot a Viper while at the same time cursing them for not doing a better job, even as she pulled every maneuver she'd ever learned to stay alive while being pursued by a dogged Death Glider on her tail.

_What I wouldn't give for those fancy inertial negators the invaders and our allies use. _Meredy cursed as the incredible g-forces created by her crazy flying pressed her into her flight seat, even through the negating fields of the inertia dampeners. _They have it so damned lucky not having to deal with this shit!_

Not that this advantage was making up for skill when it came to the enemy she noted with a grin as she saw another of the enemy's Reaper heavy fighters get torn to shreds by a Albionain Rifleman Mobile Suit off to her port side.

_Don't let yourself get distracted. _Meredy reminded herself as she pulled off an abrupt about face and opened up on the surprised enemy on her tail, reducing its ship to a cloud of debris.

Hurtling pass her kill, the young pilot continued berating herself. _Focus Meredy! You can fantasize about how all the wonderful alien technology will make your life easier _after _you survive this war!_

A bright flash nearby caught her attention and the teenager spun her machine to face its source, only to see the _Galactica _had jumped out.

_Did they ru-_

Her uncharitable thought wasn't even fully formed when another brilliant flash caught her attention right in the heart of the enemy formation.

"What the hell?" Meredy asked, inadvertently echoing the thoughts of many across the battlefield, even as she glanced at her DRADIS.

It showed her the truth as the marker for the _Galactica _repeatedly jumped in and out of the enemy's formation, presumably dealing damage and sowing confusion each time.

"That's genius!" The young woman shouted enthusiastically even as she jinxed her Viper to the side to avoid a stream of plasma bolts from a Needle Threader that had locked onto her.

Even as she began another dogfight with the enemy, Meredy paid half a mind to her DRADIS and watched with a grin as the _Galactica_'s tactic was copied by the other Battlestars and the Cylon Basestars.

* * *

"Sir, the other Battlestars and Basestars are following our lead," the DRADIS officer informed him excitedly.

"Good," Adama said with a nod. "Let's see the Goa'uld bastards cope with dozens of ships harassing them from inside their own formations. Don't forget to forward our jump targets to our allies. We don't want to jump into the same spot."

"Already transmitting our target list, sir." The comms officer replied. "They're sending theirs over too."

"I'm compiling them and making changes as necessary." The tactical officer shouted before Adama could order her to do so.

Satisfied that his men had that covered, Adama turned to his engineering officer. "Status on the jump drives?"

"They're straining," the engineering officer took a moment off the phone with the crew down in the engine room to report. "But we're switching them up, so we should be able to keep it up for a while longer."

"Thank gods the Cylons recommended we install a few backup drives as part of the refit," someone said to much agreement among the CIC crew.

"Sir, hail from the _Protector_," the comms officer said urgently. "It's in text. We're jumping too much for a stable Wireless connection."

"What's it say?" Adama asked as he looked over the DRADIS feeds and kept pointing out possible jump targets.

"Captain Natalie says you're brilliant," the young officer said with a grin. "She says they'd never have thought to try something like this because of the Goa'uld hyperspace inhibitors but it seems your daring just proved that our jump drives are just different enough to get through their jamming."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Adama returned absentmindedly.

"Sir, enemy formations are collapsing." His XO informed him, gesturing to the enemy's right flank which was disintegrating.

"I see it," Adama nodded. "Shift our attention to their right. Let's finish this."

* * *

Meredy killed a pair of Death Gliders as they tried to initiate an attack run on the _Galactica_ as it jumped in to engage the last of the enemy's Ha'taks with a smile on her face. Thanks to the crazy asses on the Old Girl of the Fleet, they'd just about won a battle that she'd sure they would've lost.

_Not that it was without cost,_ Meredy noted with a frown as a small explosion ripped open a section of the _Galactica'_s hull as one of its overworked jump drives overloaded.

This seemed to be like blood in the water for the Goa'uld's remaining strike craft and from all across the battlefield, they began converging on the venerable Battlestar.

_Not on my watch, _Meredy declared as she gunned down a Needle Threader that was too focused on attacking the _Galactica_ to even notice she was on its tail.

Even as the old warship was swarmed by strike craft, friend and foe alike, it didn't stop fighting. It threw thick clouds of flak to support friendly pilots whilst simultaneously firing every anti-ship weapon it had, be it its old kinetic cannons or the newly installed Cylon make laser pulse cannons, at the Ha'tak.

Between it's fire and those of the nearby allied fleet, the Goa'uld vessel stood no chance. Within seconds its shields collapsed and it was blasted to scrap by the relentless fire from no less than a dozen different capital ships.

Meredy saw the glorious sight just as she finished assisting a Chiropteran Fighter in taking down a Goa'uld Reaper and couldn't help herself as she cheered wildly.

She wasn't the only Colonial on that battlefield who was doing the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> Hope this was a fun read.
> 
> Just wanted to explain that long conversation between Nagala and Tigh in the middle of the chapter. Partially it's to infodump some background details, but mainly it's designed to illustrate that Nagala has come to trust Tigh. They were making friendly small talk and you don't do that without at least some level of trust. Hope it wasn't too much of a stretch.
> 
> Well, that's it for now. Till next time, adieu!


	10. Expanded Horizons: Liberating Cyrannus

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Expanded Horizons**

**Chapter Four: Liberating Cyrannus**

**Beta: **

* * *

"Ladies and gentlemen," Admiral Nagala said via Wireless to the assembled allied fleet hovering in Ragnar orbit from the CIC of the _Atlantia_. "It's time. Time to liberate the Colonies. May the gods be with us. Begin the liberation!"

At his command the hundreds of Colonial, Cylon, Albionian and Chiropteran ships entered into hyperspace to begin the largest single military operation the Cyrannus system had ever seen in its history.

* * *

"DRADIS report!" Commander William Adama barked as the _Galactica _and the rest of the allied squadron assigned to the recapture of Picon dropped out of hyperspace.

"Detecting 48 Ha'tak, 83 Shel'tak, and 278 Al'kesh." The junior officer manning the DRADIS station reported dutifully.

_We're pretty evenly matched then. _Adama noted as he eyed the feed himself and compared the enemy numbers to the allied force.

"Inhibition field?"

"Looks like they've retuned it sir." The DRADIS officer reported with a shake of his head. "Guess they learned their lesson from Ragnar."

"Then we'll just have to do this the old fashioned way." Adama replied with a determined look. "Deploy all fighters and prep for ship-to-ship combat. It's time to kill us some snakes."

* * *

At Adama's command, hundreds of Vipers and Raptors of various makes swarmed out of the damaged but still functional flight pods of the _Galactica _and hastily formed up into their squadrons before vectoring at full speed towards the Goa'uld's own incoming fighters. All around them, Coalition fighters were doing the same creating a truly massive cloud of strike craft that promptly threw themselves at the equally large Goa'uld formation. Within moments things had quickly descended into a murderous brawl.

As part of this close quarter portion of the battle, Captain Catherine "Cat" Ganan led a squadron of reactivated reservists as they flew through the wreckage of Picon's once imposing orbital defenses in a game of cat and mouse with the Goa'uld forces hidden within the ring of debris.

"_Damn the snakes! We took years to put these stations up, they've been here for weeks and they've already blown them to bits!?"_ One of Cat's subordinates said with an unhappy growl over the Wireless.

"Less talking, more killing." Cat shot back coolly as she blew apart a Death Glider that was flying cautiously through the debris field as if lost.

Unfortunately, it's destruction gave away her location and a gods be damned enemy Mobile Suit came gunning after her, it's Rotary Staff Cannon blazing away at full auto.

"Pits!" Cat cursed as she jinxed out of the way as the enemy machine followed after her doggedly, maneuvering in ways that the unwieldy looking machine had no right managing. "Some help here!"

_"We've got it."_ A pair of her squadmates replied, firing a pair of missiles at the thing.

Much to Cat's dismay, the missiles barely scratched the thing's shields and choosing to ignore them the Goa'uld Mobile Suit kept chasing her.

"Frak! I'm gonna die here aren't I?" Cat cursed in resignation, even as she narrowly avoided another burst from the damned monster machine's gun.

_"No you ain't mam,"_ her XO shouted back. _"Everyone light that thing up! Let's see if it can shrug off our full payload!"_

At that her squadmates burst out of the cover of the debris from all around the Goa'uld Mobile Suit and blitzed it, guns blazing and firing every missile they had at it. The damned thing's shield flared a brilliant orange in response to the sustained barrage and it finally switched its target, shooting its gun wildly in all directions to fend off her squad's determined assault.

Spinning around, Cat joined in. Gunning her engines so she was in a direct vector for the enemy she loosed all her remaining missiles, the weight of which _finally _knocked down its shield. Even then the bullets from their cannons just bounced off the ugly machine's armor, that is until a missile screamed in and blew apart the Mobile Suit's cockpit.

_"Knew it was smart to keep one last missile in reserve."_ One of her squadmates crowed victoriously as they all flew away from the downed enemy.

"Yes, very smart." Cat agreed. "Now let's go rearm. We're all outta missiles and I don't think anyone of us want to tango with one of those monsters again without them."

_"No mam,"_ her XO replied with a cheeky grin she could practically hear over the Wireless. _"Lead the way."_

Shaking her head at the antics of these reservists, Cat vectored her machine away from the fighter skirmish and towards the _Galactica_ with her squadron dutifully following her tail. As she did, she spared a glance at her DRADIS to peek at the state of the overall battle and couldn't resist the smile on her face as she saw the enemy center collapse and the allied fleet move to surround the now isolated enemy wings.

* * *

"Hail nearby ships and strike craft," Ryan ordered as he commanded the _Yashuman_ as part of the allied group assigned to the liberation of Virgon. "Focus fire on that Ha'tak! It's out of position and ripe for the picking."

He couldn't be more pleased with his assignment. He was having a blast returning the favor to the Goa'uld right where they'd defeated him the last time around.

"Nearby friendlies copy," his XO, Mariam, fresh out of the Life Center, replied with a bloodthirsty grin.

She was even more enthusiastic at the chance to rid Virgon of the snakes. The forested world was her homeworld and since she'd been cleared for duty by the ship's medical officer she'd been all but frothing at the mouth to win it back from the enemy.

"Target Ha'tak's shields are down," the DRADIS officer reported. "Friendly Rifleman squad are going in fo- Target sunk. I repeat. Target sunk!"

Ryan and Mariam shared a grin for a moment before they both turned back to the battle at hand. There were still many more snakes to kill.

* * *

Lieutenant Meredy "Kid" Nolan wasn't quite sharing her superior's enthusiasm for the battle at that moment. Flying CAP around the _Yashuman _the young woman found herself in a tight spot as she tried to evade the fire from a Goa'uld Mobile Suit armed with a Staff Cannon. Her only saving grace was the relatively slow rate of fire of the enemy's weapon made it relatively easy to evade its shots, but she knew even a single glancing hit would kill her which meant even the slightest mistake and she'd be toast.

_Maybe I can lure it into the Yashuman's point defense net? _Meredy thought as she barely jinxed out of the way of another plasma bolt. _No, the Battlestar's defense guns weren't upgraded. Its kinetic weapons won't even nick this thing's paint._

"_Colonial pilot, hold on! I'm on the way."_ A voice suddenly crackled over the Wireless, startling Meredy causing her to buck her Viper to the starboard and thus narrowly avoiding yet another deadly plasma bolt.

_Who the bla-_

Before she could even formulating the question in her mind, the answer presented itself as a Albionain Rifleman blitzed down from above, its Staff Carbine blazing on full auto as it zeroed in on the enemy Mobile Suit that had been giving Meredy so much trouble.

To the enemy's credit, it immediately recognized the threat and spun to face the Rifleman and fired shot after shot of its Cannon at the Albionian machine. But the Rifleman just danced around its shots whilst it kept its own fire on target, whittling away at the Goa'uld machine's shields. The moment it dropped, Meredy launched a pair of her missiles at the thing, reducing her former tormentor to scrap in a single satisfying fireball.

"Thanks," Meredy sent back to the Albionain who had saved her life and got a salute from the humanoid machine in return as it streaked past to rejoin the continuing fighter melee even as she did the same.

_Man, I hope I get to pilot my own MS one day. _The young Colonial pilot fantasized as she flew back towards the _Yashuman_, taking out a Needle Threader in the process. _That'll be so cool!_

* * *

Even as battles raged over Picon, Virgon and the other Colonies, Caprica led the battle over Scorpia. It was the last known location of Gaius and she was desperate to get on the ground to search for him, but in order to do that she first needed to destroy the Goa'uld fleet that held the planet's orbit.

_Flanks, detach and form up in spindle formations. _Caprica ordered through the Cylon network and via Wireless. _We'll drill through their wings and then englobe their center. _

She watched through the same network as the allied fleet obeyed. The two wings of her forces breaking off from the main fleet and each forming into a drill like formation which then proceeded to slam into the Goa'uld fleet's own flanks. Apparently confused by the unconventional tactic, they didn't react in time and were smashed, allowing the allied flanks to quickly engulf the enemy center.

_Squadrons Thetis, Perspehone, mop up the enemy ships scattered by our last maneuver. Don't let them catch us in the rear. Main body support the englobement. _

Caprica 'watched' through the eyes of the Basestar she was commanding from as the two squadrons of capital ships she'd ordered to proceeded to pull away from the tightening vice around the enemy center to hunt down the handful of enemy stragglers that had escaped their trap.

_Things are going well. _Caprica noted with satisfaction. _Soon, Gaius. Soon._

* * *

It was a feeling shared by Major Castor "Hawk" Hall as he flew in his Viper and fought in the fighter melee over Scorpia. The planet was his homeworld and he was determined to win it back even if it meant fighting under the leadership of Cylons.

Knowing his Viper was under equipped by the standards of both the Goa'uld and his allies, he'd taken to picking on the enemy's crappy, outdated and increasingly rare standard Death Gliders and the insanely agile but weakly armored Needle Threaders. Much to his dismay, his search got him caught in the sights of a blasted enemy Reaper. Fortunately though, the damned thing was slow as the Pits and its pilot was an idiot.

This combination allowed the veteran Colonial pilot to easily lure the lumbering beast of a fighter into the engagement range of a pair of Cylon Raiders.

"It's all yours boys," Hawk sent jovially over the Wireless as he shot pass the allied birds.

"_Thanks for the assist,"_ the synthesized feminine voice of one of the Raiders' controlling intelligences sent back even as they unloaded a brace of their heavy missiles and blew the Reaper into scrap.

He was about to send his thanks when in a brilliant flash of a jump a battered looking Battlestar _Pegasus _unexpectedly jumped in a stone's throw away and began disgorging its fighters.

"What in the world?" Hawk inadvertently sent, his finger still holding down his Wireless' talk button.

"_It would seem the interdiction coverage has holes now that most of the Goa'uld ships have been destroyed." _The same Raider from earlier replied. "_Allied ships are not blocking jump drives with our own interdictors."_

Castor would have replied, but he was stunned speechless by what the _Pegasus _did next. It immediately opened fire. But not on a Goa'uld ship, but an allied Albionian Ha'tak that had just moved to shield it from fire from the Goa'uld line.

"You're frakking me!?" Castor shouted in indignation even as he heard frantic cries from multiple Colonial radio operators to inform it that the Albionians and Cylons were friendly.

"_In bound," _a male mechanical voice said, which Hawk's instruments helpfully told him came from the other Raider he was flying with. "_Looks like Pegasus' Vipers. They are gunning for us."_

"Like hell they are," Hawk shouted indignantly as he flew to intercept his deluded countrymen, all whilst shouting at them over the Wireless.

"Hold your fire, you bunch of idiots! The Cylons are on our side!"

"_Shut the frak up, you toaster lover!" _One of the incoming Pegasus pilots' shot back eloquently over the Wireless in reply even as he and his wingmen opened fire on Hawk.

"Frak, you Pit spawned dumbasses!" Hawk cursed as he returned fire, downing three of the six Pegasus birds flying his way.

"_Roast in the Pit, you traitor!" _One of the survivors said as he and his remaining buddies fired a brace of missiles at Hawk that was summarily intercepted by a burst of rapid fire plasma bolts from the two Raiders from earlier as they came to back Hawk up.

"Thanks guys," Castor sent them gratefully, even as the three of them made quick work of the last three Pegasus Vipers.

This was also roughly the same time that the captain of the Battlestar _Valkyrie_, the lone Colonial ship part of the Scorpia liberation, jumped right on top of the _Pegasus _and unloaded the full complement of its guns onto the rogue ship. Within seconds, the _Mercury_-class lost its engines, most of its guns, and got its flight pods blown the hell off.

"_Pegasus neutralized." _The _Valkyrie_'s captain said over the Wireless. "_Sorry for the interruption. We'll keep it contained. Focus on the liberation."_

Hawk didn't need to be told twice, winging away from the disabled _Pegasus_ alongside his two new Cylon wingmen he dove back into the dying battle. The Goa'uld were almost finished with only a handful of ships left but that didn't mean they could relax just yet.

None of them would relax until Scorpia and Cyrannus as a whole was cleansed of the snakes.

* * *

_Final enemy ship silenced. _The Basestar's controlling intelligence sent to Caprica. _Go._

_Thank you. _Caprica replied as she hastily pulled her hands out from the interface pool that allowed her to link directly with the ship's systems and the rest of the Cylon network with the enhanced bandwidth needed to facilitate effective battlefield command.

Not even bothering to shake off the fluid of the pool and ignoring the towel a helpful Eight was holding out to her, Caprica broke into a run and raced off the Basestar's bridge. Cylons of all types practically jumped out of her way as she sprinted down the halls to the elevators. She'd barely hopped into a cab when it shot down at borderline unsafe speeds towards the hangars, more than likely courtesy of the Basestar's intelligence.

The moment it reached her destination and the cab's door opened, Caprica was off like a shot and into a helpfully waiting Heavy Raider.

"Surface. I need to-"

"_Head to the surface, I know." _The Raider replied. "_I'm lifting in a second. We'll be part of the first wave of landings. Calm down a little. We'll find your lover. I promise."_

"Thank you," Caprica offered sincerely, even as a troop of other Sixes, a handful of Eights and a single Four, all armed to the teeth and with the Four carrying the supplies to play the role of medic, boarded the Raider.

"Think nothing of it," one of her sister Sixes said as she handed her a plasma rifle and some tactical equipment, including a personnel shield. "We all know how you feel."

"Thank you," Caprica said, tears in her eyes.

The other Six just squeezed her shoulder and turned to nod at one of the Raider's internal cameras.

At this signal, the Raider raised its loading ramp and began to lift off.

"_ETA to landing zone is ten minutes." _

* * *

"Sir, Scorpia orbit liberated." The comms officer reported, much to the cheer of _Atlantia_'s CIC crew.

They were right to cheer. With this latest round of news, only Caprican and Sagittaron orbit remained contested. Nevertheless they still had a battle to fight, so despite his own buoyed mood, Admiral Nagala cut into the building joy.

"Gentlemen, stay focused." The leader of the Colonial Fleet ordered. "We still have three dozen Goa'uld capitals to sink. Finish off those _then _cheer."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." His XO apologized on behalf of his chastised crew.

Nagala waved the apology away and instead turned to his plots. He had a battle to finish.

"Who is handling that group of Ha'tak?" Nagala asked pointed towards a trio of the enemy's motherships that were attempting to flank their formation.

"The Albionians said they have it handled, sir." His comms officer replied.

"Handled? How?"

* * *

Char, ace of the Albion Stellar Empire, was the answer to Nagala's question. Piloting Albion's latest Mobile Armor, the Regina, she moved to intercept the three Goa'uld Ha'tak while backed by two squadrons of Rifleman and a pair of Vengeances.

_Only three ships? Seriously, are the Goa'uld stupid? How the hell do they think that's enough to flank our whole fleet? _Char thought incredulously as she launched the hundreds of relatively tiny attack drones that the Regina's developers had named Funnels for their superficial similarity to the tool.

Sending the Funnels forward at absurd speeds that would have killed a human pilot, she had them englobe the three enemy ships whilst avoiding their anemic point defense fire.

_They're barely putting out a flak screen at all!? Are they really stupid enough to see unknowns as non-threats!? _Char thought with an exasperated shake of her head even as she gave the order to fire via the mind-machine interface of her Regina and its quantum entanglement links to the Funnels.

Within seconds, hundreds of plasma beams shot at the three enemy Ha'tak from all directions. Though each beam was relatively weak, the sheer weight of fire easily allowed the funnels to shatter the motherships' shields and carve them into pieces.

The whole engagement barely lasted a minute or two.

_Pathetic. _Char thought with a tired sigh as she recovered her funnels and began searching the battlefield for a more worthwhile fight.

* * *

"By the gods," Nagala whispered in shock as he watched the Regina's slaughter of the enemy motherships as observed by the long range cameras that had been added to the _Atlantia_'s sensor suite in its upgrade.

_Thank the gods that the Albionians are on our side. _The admiral thought, a line of thinking that he was sure was undoubtedly shared by all those who watched what had just transpired.

"Sir, the fleet reports Sagittaron orbit secured."

"Then that means we're the last ones left," Nagala concluded. "Remaining enemy forces?"

"6 Ha'tak, 12 Shel'tak." His XO reported. "They're maintaining a defensive sphere and are attempting a fighting retreat."

"We can't let them," Nagala concluded, fearing they might go to ground somewhere in Cyrannus and thus continue to pose a threat. "Close the noose. Don't let them get away!"

"Sir! The Albionian Mobile Armor is engaging the enemy remnants."

"On screen!" Nagala ordered, even as the main tactical screen was replaced by a real time feed of the deadly Albionian Mobile Armor and its escorts dancing through the heart of the enemy's formation, their deadly plasma beams flashing.

The enemy threw up huge clouds of plasma flak and launched every fighter and Mobile Suit they had left, even damaged machines, but the Albionians were undeterred. Supported by the fire of allied capital ships, the Albionians scored one kill after another. Things got even more confused when like a swarm of locusts, dozens of Chiropteran fighters descended on the beleaguered Goa'uld flotilla as well, adding their own deadly weight to the effort to finish the snakes off. The assault was so intense that within minutes of frantic combat that saw plasma beams and bolts flying in every possible direction, the last of the enemy was destroyed.

"I never want to make enemies of the Albionains."

"Or the Chiropterans."

Nagala just nodded. "And with luck, we won't ever will. Now bring up an image of Caprica."

The DRADIS operator obliged and Nagala winced at what he saw. A response all his captains and many of his men across his command did as well when they finally had the time to properly look at their worlds. Caprica had once been a lush blue-green planet, covered by large oceans and continents. A picturesque sight when seen from orbit. Now that beauty was scarred by large craters and plains of what Nagala could guess was glass. It seemed that the Goa'uld had resorted to large scale orbital bombardment.

"By the gods," Nagala breathed out in pained shock as he stood transfixed at what had become of the center of Colonial civilization.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> Hope you guys liked it.
> 
> The Albionians really get a chance to shine, don't they? I didn't start out with the intention but it ended up as such and I actually quite like it. It fits into things in a way I didn't consider until I finished writing this chapter. Namely that it is the Albionians which really want to fight the Long War against the Goa'uld, not necessarily the Chiropterans (see Saya's promise to Diva at the end of the Ori war to shift focus away from their military and back to development). Hence, the Albionians are the ones who put in the most effort in this campaign against the Goa'uld Remnant. Hopefully that explains things.
> 
> All right that's it for this chapter. Till next time, ciao!


	11. Expanded Horizons: Expanded Horizons

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Expanded Horizons**

**Chapter Five: Expanded Horizons**

**Beta: **

* * *

Nagala as the new Chief Admiral of the Colonial Fleet, sat down in a meeting room in the refurbished starliner, _Colonial One_ that was currently serving as the seat of government for the Twelve Colonies of Kobol.

Sitting across him was the acting President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, Laura Roslin.

She was formerly the Secretary of Education, but as the last surviving member of the pre-invasion cabinet, she'd been appointed as President for now until elections could be held.

"How goes the hunt for the remaining Goa'uld?" Roslin asked without preamble as she looked up from the mountain of paperwork that covered the long conference table that occupied most of the room.

Nagala winced in sympathy at the amount of work the poor woman must be finding herself handling in her current, very much unexpected position.

"Admiral Nagala, your report please." The president demanded, her voice steely.

"Apologies, Madam President." Nagala offered. "Our Chiropteran allies are actively helping us hunt down the handful of remaining Goa'uld forces across the Cyrannus system. We're offering them as much help as we can, but with the Fleet as depleted as it is… They're doing most of the job."

"Regrettable but understandable," Roslin acknowledged. "What of the Albion forces?"

"They are unfortunately a little too similar in appearance to the Goa'uld forces, which has led to several cases of mistaken identity and misguided 'reprisal' attacks against them from our people. As a result of which they have mostly withdrawn from the system and chosen instead to pursue the Goa'uld."

"They haven't retaliated?"

"No," Nagala said with a shake of his head. "They didn't even report the incidents. If my men didn't see a few of them themselves, we wouldn't even know it was happening. The Albionians have shown incredible restraint, mam."

"We should be glad for that."

"Most definitely, mam." Nagala agreed. After seeing what the Albionians were capable of during the liberation, he couldn't agree more. If possible, he never wanted to be their enemy.

"How goes the recovery efforts?" Roslin asked, changing the topic.

Normally this would be outside Nagala's purview. Disaster relief and recovery falling under the authority of various civilian agencies, however with those organizations effectively destroyed by the invasion the responsibility had been assumed by the only ones still capable of attempting to meet it: the Colonial Fleet.

"Slowly, mam." Nagala admitted. "The majority of our infrastructure are in ruins and that makes things a lot harder. And that's even with about 85% of our population either dead or taken by the Goa'uld as slaves and thus off our hands, as callous as they might sound."

"Look on the bright side, admiral." Roslin told him with a bitter smile. "At least we are free and have a chance to rebuild."

* * *

On the planet of Scorpia outside the ruins of what had once been the major city of Argentum, a large refugee camp had been constructed. It was into the administration center of this camp that Caprica Six and her squad of fellow Cylons ran into as their latest stop in their search for Gaius Baltar.

After days of searching, they'd _finally _heard news that he was somewhere in the camp.

Caprica had come in expecting to have to badger the camp's administrators for clues as to Gaius' location within the sprawling Camp. But she'd barely made it into the large tent that passed for the compound's administrative center when she saw him.

He was dressed in dirty clothing the likes of which he'd have disdained before the invasion and he looked like he hadn't shaved or had a bath in days, but Caprica would recognize him anywhere.

"Gaius!" She shouted in joy at the man typing away at a computer behind a flimsy desk.

He spun around to face her.

"Caprica?" Gaius asked, shocked. "But I thought- What are you doing here?"

She knew the moment he noticed her sister Sixes and pieced the puzzle together.

"You're a Cylon?" The genius asked, shocked.

"Yes," Caprica told him walking towards him tentatively. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I was being selfish, I didn't want to lose you. And I was worried that if you knew-"

Gaius ignored her blubbering and pulled her into a kiss, one that Caprica happily returned once she overcame her surprise.

"Oh thank the gods," Gaius said resting his head against her own. "Thank the gods you were a Cylon. That meant you were safe throughout the war."

"Something like that," Caprica hedged, unwilling to burst his bubble by revealing how she'd fought in almost every battle in the war trying to save him.

She could do that later.

"I was worried you were still on Caprica." Gaius said, before kissing her again.

Caprica practically melted into the kiss.

She could worry about everything else later. Right now, she was with Gaius again and that was all that mattered.

* * *

Days after the liberation, Lieutenant Meredy "Kid" Nolan found herself helping out alongside a bunch of other off-duty Fleet personnel at a refugee camps set up in a sports stadium on Virgon's surface. It was one of many.

Virgon like every other Colony had been hit hard by the Goa'uld. Whole cities had been destroyed via orbital bombardment simply to force the planet's submission and the remaining cities emptied as the snakes herded their populations into their ships to be enslaved.

While the cities were hit hardest, the countryside wasn't spared either. Any large concentration of people had been a target for the snakes as well. This meant that only those lucky enough to have been in the wilderness when the invasion began or with the foresight to escape into it at its onset had escaped.

But even these were not entirely safe, as roving bands of Jaffa loyal to the Goa'uld had scoured the countryside for sources of resistance and fresh slaves throughout the occupation. Whenever they found them, they killed the former and captured the latter for processing at the concentration camps that the still standing cities had become.

All in all, this meant that of the 4.3 billion people that called Virgon home before the invasion, less than half a billion people had survived.

Half a billion people that the Fleet and its allies were now struggling to feed and clothe.

Shelter they had in abundance, thanks to the depopulation of the cities. Living in the remains of destroyed lives haunted the survivors, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

Food and clothing were a bigger problem. Scavenging the cities helped, but they were simply too many people to support on that alone and with regular supply networks destroyed by the invasion, there was a real risk of starvation. And the lack of appropriate clothing likewise was proving difficult.

At least they would be if the Albionians hadn't shipped in food and clothes by the mothership. Literally. Meredy had seen for herself how mothership after mothership of aid had arrived in the Cyrannus system in a steady stream from the Stellar Empire. Without that, she honestly doubted the Colonies could survive the aftermath of the Goa'uld invasion.

"Here you go," the young pilot said with a smile as she ladled some stew into a young boy's bowl as he stopped in front of her station in the food line. "Enjoy your meal."

The boy, probably no more than ten, nodded distractedly and walked off. His eyes looking painfully vacant. It was a look that Meredy had sadly seen far too often in the various aid stations. The Goa'uld ran their operations on terror and had used copious displays of brutality to instill it into the Colonials during their occupation. As such, almost everyone who had to live through it had borne witness to one act of barbarity or the other.

_Gods, I hope the snakes get what's coming to them. _Meredy prayed even as she offered a smile to the next refugee in the line.

* * *

While the Fleet tended to the survivors of the brief but brutal Goa'uld occupation on the surface of the Twelve Colonies, they also had to take care of its own personnel.

One way they had chosen to do so was to throw a massive party to celebrate their victory and the liberation of the Colonies in one of the empty cargo bays of the Ragnar Anchorage which had been towed into Caprican orbit to be used as the Colonial Fleet's base of operations.

As one of the relatively few Albionians still in the Cyrannus system, the majority having moved on to pursue the Goa'uld and avoid reprisal attacks due to being mistaken for the snakes, Char was probably the only Albionian in attendance and thus was being piled with thank yous from the Colonials around her.

"Here, have another." One of the various Colonial pilots that surrounded her said as he offered her a bottle of beer. "As one of our saviors you'll get free flow tonight. It'll be all on us."

"I appreciate it," Char returned with a self-conscious smile. "But I really wasn't a savior or anything."

"Says the woman who shot down practically half the enemy fleet all on her lonesome." Another local pilot countered with a playful huff.

"It was only six Ha'taks and I had my squadron for backup." Char corrected. "Besides I was just doing my job."

"Well, your job meant we mopped the floor with the snakes sooner than we otherwise could and that saved a ton of our lives." A third Colonial pilot said with a grin. "So I think I speak for all of us when I say that you deserve to be called our savior."

"So say we all!" Chorused a dozen or so local pilots before everyone burst into a chuckle.

Chuckling along with them, Char relented and took a swig of her beer.

"This _is _good." Char noted in shock. "Beats the stuff we have back home outta the water!"

"Really?" One of the Colonial pilots asked before a mischievous grin spread across her face. "Hey get us a crate of Virgon Brew! Our savior likes it!"

This was met with an enthusiastic cheer from the crowd and a couple of people in the group around her split off, presumably to go source the aforementioned crate of beer.

It was as the group shifted to accommodate their departure that a heavyset man in a sweater with the insignia of what she recognized as the Colonial Marine Corps emblazoned on it pushed his way through the crowd to stand right in front of Char.

"So rumor has it that you're one of the Albionians. Are you?" The marine demanded angrily.

"Yes," Char replied cautiously putting down her drink on a nearby crate that had been doubling as a table.

"Then frak you!" The marine yelled, throwing a punch. "You lot are just more of the frakking snakes!"

Char had tried to evade the punch by stepping back but between the slight buzz she was feeling from her drinking and the lack of space, she was forced to take the hit to her face and was sent tumbling to the floor.

"Frak you, you jarhead!" One of the Char's Colonial friends cursed even as another two restrained the agitated marine. "What the frak are you doing?"

"S-shit! I think he broke my nose." Char cursed as she clutched her bleeding nose.

"Frak!" One of her Colonial friends checking on her hissed. "Okay, let's get you to the Life Center. I'm sure they'll get you fixed up in no time."

"She's one of the snakes!" The marine insisted fighting against those restraining him. "Do you know what they've done!?"

"She isn't one of the Goa'uld!" Another Colonial, a high ranking one, if the way the crowd reacted to his presence was any indication said sternly. "She fought alongside us against them, you piece of shit."

The marine looked ready to keep arguing, but Char didn't hear anymore as she was guided away to get her nose looked at.

* * *

Newly promoted, again, Colonel Castor "Hawk" Hall was celebrating both his promotion and the liberation of the Colonies in the party that the maintenance crews of Ragnar had thrown.

It was a little inappropriate in his mind to be celebrating. Especially after so many people had died during the invasion, but after everything that happened plenty of people just needed an outlet to have some fun and relax. That was why, he suspected, the higher ups had allowed this.

"You started the war as a lieutenant and ended it as Colonel, really?" A shapely young blonde going by the callsign "Cat" gasped. "And I thought me jumping up to Major was big."

Cat had like him and the handful of surviving senior pilots been called in to Ragnar Anchorage for a series of meetings to compare notes on the liberation. Castor had hit it off with her during the meetings and now had the pleasure of escorting her to the party.

"Considering our losses, a bunch of field promotions for us survivors isn't really that unexpected." Castor replied with a shrug. "Besides the only reason I made Colonel was because I fought with the Cylons over Scorpia. They want me to be some kind of liaison or trainer or some such to help us prepare to fight with them in the future if need be."

"And against them, if need be?"

"Possibly," Castor replied with a frown. "But I don't think that's likely. They seem pretty genuine in wanting to let bygones be bygones."

"I guess you're right," Cat nodded. "But you know how Fleet is, they'll want to be prepared for ever-"

Their conversation was interrupted by a commotion nearby and both senior pilots whirled around to see what was going on, only to spot a woman in the uniform of the Albionian navy get punched in the face by a marine.

"Frak!" Cat cursed as they both pushed their way through to the scene.

Thankfully, the woman's Colonial friends had restrained the idiot and was checking on her, but Castor noted with a wince that it looked like the lady's nose was broken.

"Cat, go make sure the Albionian is okay." Castor ordered, even as he finished pushing his way to stand in front of the marine.

"She's one of the snakes!" The marine insisted, fighting against those restraining him. "Do you know what they've done!?"

"She isn't one of the Goa'uld!" Castor informed the man sternly. "She fought alongside us against them, you piece of shit."

"It's probably some trick!" The marine insisted. "Her friends couldn't break us, even after all the things they did so now they're resorting to tricks."

"And why the hell would they need to do that?" Castor demanded. "They're millennia ahead of us technologically. Literally! They could wipe us out at the drop of a hat. The Goa'uld almost did! Yet, the Albionians helped us fight them off!"

"It's a lie!" The marine said, unwilling to change his mind. "It has to be. They're the same. They'll do to us what the other snakes did. T-they'll blow up our cities, herd us like cattle, kill us for fun. They will. They will!"

Castor was taken aback a little by what the marine described, until it clicked. This man had survived the war by living through the brutal Goa'uld occupation.

"Look man," Castor said in the most calming tone he could manage. "I get you've been through shit. I get it. But you've gotta know what you did was wrong. Hitting one of our allies? Our saviors? That's not acceptable. So I'm gonna send you to the brig overnight to cool off and that's that okay? No punishment beyond that."

The marine didn't seem happy with that. At all. He began shouted increasingly incomprehensible curses against the Albionians, Castor himself, and the blokes who were holding him in place.

"Take him to the brig," Castor ordered the two men restraining the marine.

"Yes, sir!" The two responded as they dragged the struggling man off.

"You handled that pretty well, Colonel." Cat said as she appeared at his side. "Firm but fair."

"How's our victim?"

"One of her commanders intercepted us on the way to the Life Center and dragged her off to be treated on one of their own ships."

"You didn't follow?"

"Her commander told us it wasn't necessary." Cat said with a shrug. "If I was reading her rank insignia right she was a Fleet Lord, basically an admiral right? I wasn't about to second guess an order from a flag officer."

"Fair enough." Castor nodded.

* * *

At the same time that Cat was catching Castor up on what had happened, Reshi was walking Char to the Tel'tak docked to the Anchorage and whose transport rings were being used by the Albionians as a transit hub between their ships and the Colonial station.

"Looks like you've made some loyal friends, Second Prime." Reshi teased. "I don't think I would've managed to get them to hand you over to me without pulling rank."

"Why did you do that anyway?" The ace asked, her voice distorted by her injury.

"We haven't cleared any of the Colonials to see our medical technologies yet, so it's either scaring them off or let you suffer longer since they don't have anything like our Healing Devices."

"Thanks, my lady. This thing hurts like a bitch. Wouldn't want to bear with it longer than I had to. But-"

"But why the secrecy with our new allies? Politics. It's above my pay grade so I don't know the details though."

"Those paranoid worms over in the intel services and diplomatic corps are being asses again most likely."

Reshi offered a diplomatic noncommittal shrug even though she agreed with the sentiment.

"So, my lady. What were you doing heading down to the party anyways? Shouldn't you be abstaining in your condition?"

"I'm pregnant, not an invalid." Reshi said tiredly. She'd had to repeat this point far more often than she'd have liked. "So long as I don't drink it'll be fine."

"Go to a party and not drink?"

"Is it that inconceivable?" Reshi said with a smile. "Besides, I'm really just going to see if I can wrangle myself some bottles of the Colonial's ambrosia for my husband."

"That's all?" Char said disbelievingly. "You could've just asked. I'm pretty sure we've been gifted enough of the stuff to drown the whole fleet in it."

"Well, I haven't received any." Reshi said with a pout. She was really looking forward to it too. She might not have been able to drink it now, but had been very much hoping to try some once she gave birth.

"Must have been in lieu of your condition." Char mused.

"That I and just got here not long ago with the latest supply fleet."

"Light duties?"

"Yeah," Reshi said with a wistful sigh. As much as she was thrilled about having a baby, she did miss leading sailors into battle.

"Well, don't worry about a thing, my lady." The ace assured her as they finally reached the airlock to the Tel'tak. "I'll round up a few bottles of the good stuff and have it delivered to you."

"Thank you, Second Prime."

* * *

Adama and Seadeep, now both admirals, stood side by side as they looked out of the viewport of one of Ragnar Anchorage's observation lounges.

Below them, a number of surviving Colonial ships sat docked to the station and undergoing the installation of shields and energy weapons.

"The Fleet's current roster is a far cry from the pre-invasion numbers." Adama commented with a frown.

"Yes," Seadeep acknowledged. "But with the advanced systems being installed, this smaller fleet will be considerably more powerful than the pre-invasion fleet."

"I suppose so," Adama conceded.

"Adama, Seadeep," Nagala said as he walked over to join them.

"Chief Admiral," both men saluted as their superior came to stand next to them.

Nagala quickly returned the salute and for a long moment they stood there just staring at the work being carried out on the ships below them.

"My deepest condolences, gentlemen, on the losses in your family." Nagala offered sincerely.

Adama sucked in a deep breath as grief almost overwhelmed him. He'd lost his whole family, even Starbuck who was on leave when the attack struck and was still unaccounted for. Nagala too had pretty much his whole family wiped out, though there was confirmation that one of his daughters was alive though her whereabouts was unknown. Seadeep was luckiest of them all but not by much. Out of his entire family, only one of his sons had survived and been found.

"Thank you, Chief Admiral." Seadeep offered on their behalf.

"We weren't the only ones to have lost family," Adama said after another long moment.

"_Everyone _lost loved ones." Seadeep agreed.

Nagala just nodded.

"Once the Fleet is ready, we'll take the fight to the Goa'uld and rescue our people."

"That might take a long time," Adama said with a frown. "We'd need to fight the whole Goa'uld Remnant to find them and I don't think the Coalition will back us if we tried."

"Then we'll do it alone," Seadeep countered.

"Ryan is right." Nagala said with a determined glint in his eyes. "No matter how long it will take, no matter how hard it will be. Whether we do it alone or not. Someday we _will _free our people that the Goa'uld took."

Adama exchanged a look at Seadeep before they both nodded.

"So say we all!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for this short story.
> 
> Hope you guys like it.
> 
> If you're wondering how the hell the Goa'uld managed to abduct so many people then let me explain. It's down to two things:
> 
> 1) They didn't actually abduct 85% of the 30 billion Colonials. Most of those they actually just killed. They did however take billions of slaves from this operation.
> 
> 2) They managed to take so many slaves by simply not rematerializing them. What do I mean? Well, we know that in the Stargateverse people can be stored as data inside of the storage of teleporters/transport devices that require dematerialisation and rematerialisation. There was a whole episode in canon about Teal'c being stuck in the Stargate's data buffer ("48 hours"), so the Goa'uld exploited this fact. Essentially they herded people into rings then beamed their data into storage onboard their Ha'taks and just flew back to their worlds where they slowly dematerialized them from storage.
> 
> On to another point I want to discuss. When I wrote this short story I toyed with the idea of showing what the Goa'uld would do to break a population. In the end, I decided against it mainly because it would be a little too graphic for my tastes. If you do want to know what I think they would do, and do in fact do in this verse, then PM me and I'll enlighten you.
> 
> Well, that's it for this story. Next up will be a story about the Chiropterans, so for those missing the nymphomaniac vampires please do look forward to it. Till then, peace!


	12. The Neo Ugarit Disaster

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: The Neo Ugarit Disaster**

**One Shot**

**Beta:**

* * *

Today I'm going to cover a very difficult topic for some people, especially those from the Twelve Colonies of Kobol so be forewarned.

What am I talking about?

Well, as many of you have probably already guessed, I'm talking about the failed Coalition offensive against the Goa'uld Remnant known as Operation Emancipation or as it's more popularly known, the Neo Ugarit Disaster.

**Background**

Operation Emancipation was a direct response to the Remnant's invasion of the Twelve Colonies and its enslavement of billions of its citizens. (_For details click here_) Its aim was to drive deep into Remnant territory and seize the world of Neo Ugarit that the Remnant had been using as the primary site to process captured Colonial citizens, in the hopes of rescuing the newly enslaved Colonials.

**The plan**

The plan for Operation Emancipation was for the Albionian, Jade and Swarm fleets already engaging the Remnant along its borders as part of the Long War to intensify their attacks and pin down as much of the Remnant's forces as possible. At the same time, exploiting the relative weakness of the Goa'uld, the Coalition Joint Fleet would launch a thrust into the Remnant from its relatively undefended borders facing Colonial space.

**The campaign**

I won't go into exhaustive detail of the campaign as military history isn't my forte and because my fellow blogger, Galactic Wars, has already done a great series on it that you can read over on his blog. (_Click here for Galactic Wars' series on the Neo Ugarit Disaster_) That said I will provide a summary of events by listing out its various phases.

**Phase One: Opening Successes**

This saw things all going according to plan and the Coalition thrust cutting deep into Remnant territory in the face of unexpectedly light opposition. Millions of Colonial citizens were freed in this phase and repatriated to their homeland. Things were going suspiciously well and the leaders of the offensive, according to contemporary reports, were on high alert for the trap they sensed they were walking into to be sprung. Unfortunately despite their caution, they were nevertheless unprepared for it when it snapped shut around them.

**Phase Two: The Trap of Neo Ugarit**

This short phase saw Coalition forces reach the target world of Neo Ugarit and after defeating the local garrison they entered orbit of the world before beginning deployment of ground forces to liberate the world. This was precisely when the Remnant forces detonated the large cache of Worldbreaker warheads they'd hidden on the planet. The resultant blast destroyed the planet and the entire Coalition fleet around it. These losses amounted to the death of billions of people, many of them the Colonial citizens the offensive had set out to liberate, along with 48% of the entire Coalition Joint Fleet.

**Phase Three: The Remnant Counteroffensive**

Capitalizing on the losses sustained by the Coalition Joint Flee at Neo Ugarit, the Remnant launched a highly successful counteroffensive that not only proceeded to drive Coalition forces entirely out of the territories they had only just recently liberated but allowed it to extend its holdings to the point at which it once again threatened the Cyrannus star system with invasion.

**Phase Four: Stabilization**

Complete breakthrough by Remnant forces was thankfully avoided when Albion and the Swarm rushed reserves to the front. At great cost, these hastily assembled forces managed to stop the Remnant counteroffensive and stabilize the front back along the pre-Operation Emancipation border.

**Outcome**

It doesn't take a genius to conclude that in hindsight, Operation Emancipation was an unmitigated disaster. Between the losses at Neo Ugarit and combat losses throughout the rest of the campaign, the Coalition loss more than half of its Joint Fleet, its rapid response taskforce. A loss that it has not fully recovered from till this day, greatly undermining its ability to react to threats. Thankfully it still proved capable enough to defend the Milky Way from the threat of the Wraith Superhive.

Less fortuitously, these losses have soured public opinion throughout the Coalition towards launching another attempt at liberating the Colonial citizens taken by the Goa'uld in their brief occupation of the Colonies. At least not for the foreseeable future. Whilst calls to liberate them still receive strong public support, any calls for another major offensive especially in the Coalition's weakened state does not. Instead, current efforts are focused on small scale attempts at surreptitiously sneaking out who they can. An effort inspired by the Underground Railroad of the early to mid-1800s United States (_Click here for more details on the Underground Railroad_) and led largely by the Tok'ra.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, the Neo Ugarit Disaster was a massive blow to the Coalition and one which it is still recovering from. It reestablished in the minds of the galaxy just how grave a threat the Goa'uld Remnant remains to this day, shattering any hope of its swift destruction and validating the rationale behind pursuing the Long War.

I personally don't like to admit it, but considering the thrashing the Coalition suffered during the Disaster it's clear that our best hope for defeating the Remnant is attrition. That this means billions will continue to suffer under its tyranny until we finally muster the strength to crush it once and for all, is abhorrent but also sadly unavoidable.

That is not to say others are quite so pessimistic. Many are advocating for a second Operation Emancipation, especially the Colonials. However, losses on the scale the Coalition suffered will not be replaced overnight and a second attempt at liberating the enslaved Colonials will not be happening anytime soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And done!
> 
> So this was a grim little interlude, huh? Well, the good guys can't always win now can they?
> 
> This one shot was inspired by a PM conversation with osterreicher97 on FFN about how the Coalition should respond to all those Colonials being enslaved by the Goa'uld Remnant. So thank them if you liked it.
> 
> Well, nothing more to say here. So till next time, adieu~!


	13. Who wants to be a Chevalier?

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Who wants to be a Chevalier?**

**One Shot**

**Beta: **

* * *

Within her bedroom on board the _Elizabeth_, Saya puts down her copy of _American Gods _by Neil Gaiman that she'd just finished.

_It's a good book. Gaiman is a very talented author. I wonder how Diva will like it._

Turning to her aforementioned twin, she finds her nude, as she so often was, and lying down on their bed, kicking her legs playfully as she fiddled with a hardlight screen.

"Diva, are you checking on the progress of that silly game of yours?"

"It's a challenge, not a game. And it's not silly!" Her twin insisted.

"I still think it's silly to choose a Chevalier through something like this, whatever you call it."

"Hey! You're the one who suggested I get a Chevalier to help with our scientific research." Diva said defensively. "What better way to make sure we get someone qualified than by testing them?"

"Yes, but a internet challenge? Really?"

Diva shrugged. "It's working isn't it? Have you seen the number of people having a go at it?"

"I already agreed to give it a shot." Saya reminded her. "I just think it isn't going to work out is all."

"You worry too much sister."

_And you worry too little. _Saya thought, careful to keep it to herself.

* * *

In her dorm room on Earth, Pham Min, a mousy, in her opinion, Vietnamese girl with deep brown eyes and chocolate brown hair who thanks to a scholarship had managed to land herself a prestigious place at MIT sat in front of her computer.

"Min!" Her all-American, blonde haired, blue eyed, roommate Alicia called out from behind her, causing the Asian girl to spin away from her computer to face her. "You sure you don't want to join us?"

"Yeah," Min sent her well meaning friend a reassuring smile. "I'm gonna keep working on the challenge. I think I'm pretty close."

"You know they'll probably not give you either the money or the chance to become a Chevalier like they promised right?"

"I know," Min said with a shrug. "But it's challenging and fun."

_And if the prize _is _real… Then I can finally leave being human behind! _

It was a deeply held secret of hers, but Min hated being human. As much as Min had become successful lately, she still remembered the early years of her life and the poverty she'd been forced to live through in the Vietnamese backcountry. A product of human greed. Be they capitalist or communist or whatever, human societies always created poverty, relative or otherwise. Once Min had understood that she'd grown a deep disdain for her own kind and a desire, if possible, to become something else. This desire more than anything else had been what drove her to take on the 'Who wants to be a Chevalier?' challenge in the slim hope that the prize was real.

"Brainiac." Alicia teased, unaware of the dark turn of the Asian girl's thoughts.

"Party girl." Min teased back. "Have fun."

"I will." Alicia said with a smile. "You too. Don't stay up too late, 'kay?"

"Yes, Mum."

Both girls burst into giggles at that even as Min waved Alicia goodbye and returned to working on the 'Who wants to be a Chevalier?' science challenge that had been making the rounds on the net lately.

* * *

In her lab in Area 51, Brigadier General Samantha Carter-O'Neill was working on the 'Who wants to be a Chevalier?' in her free time as she took a break from reviewing the progress on some of the projects she was supervising.

As she worked through the challenge, she noted that some of the questions were insanely difficult, even for her.

_I have to wonder if it's even possible for anyone on Earth to possibly complete the whole challenge._

It was no secret that whole research teams have been working on it full-time and had barely made any progress. Though she wonders if one of those teams _did_ successfully complete the challenge then what would the Swarm Queens do? Offer a place as a Chevalier to all of them?

Her musings were cut short when a banner on the challenge's website suddenly declared that there was a winner!

_Pham Min? Never heard of her. Hmm… if she doesn't become a Chevalier then we really should look into recruiting her._

* * *

In a stereotypical corporate boardroom, some of Earth's richest businessmen met to discuss recent developments.

"Is this for real?" A middle-aged blonde woman asked incredulously. "A single twenty something undergraduate managed to do something that whole teams of the world's best scientists failed to do?"

"It checks out," an old man with a long, full beard replied. "According to the background checks we've run on the girl, she's a supergenius. Possibly on the same level as Samantha Carter."

The room was full of murmurs at that. Carter's achievements were the stuff of legends. If this girl had half of Carter's brilliance then she was someone that couldn't be overlooked.

"If that is the case," said a Middle Eastern man dressed in Arab dress. "Then we must secure her talents for ourselves."

"And what can we offer her that would surpass what the Chiropterans could?" An East Asian man countered. "Many of us are suffering too much from Disclosure."

"Which is why we _must _have this girl." The Arab man insisted.

"And risk angering the Swarm even more?" A lanky bespectacled man opined. "They are already refusing to do business with us, do you want them to actively leverage their influence against us? I assure you that we won't survive that."

"We won't survive their boycott either, not for much longer." The Arab man pointed out. "Unless we do something drastic we won't change that."

"So this girl is the hill you want us to die on?" The East Asian scoffed.

"Yes! If this girl has half the talent of Samantha Carter then she could save us all from ruin."

"Enough," a bald black man said sternly, silencing the Arab man. "Hasan has a point. However, so do Joseph and Ruogang. Doing _anything _to this girl is high risk, high reward, everyone here understands that. So let us vote on the matter and be done with it."

He was met with nods of assent.

"Good, then all in favor of acquiring the girl?"

Everyone except the East Asian and the bespectacled man put up their hands, some more tentatively than others.

"That's it then," the bald man said with finality. "The Trust will do everything in its power to secure Pham Min's talents for ourselves."

* * *

Unaware of the forces moving around her, Min was out for a jog in Greene-Rose Heritage Park.

After she'd successfully completed the 'Who wants to be a Chevalier?' challenge, her whole world had turned upside down. She'd barely hit the submit button when she'd been contacted by the Chiropteran embassy to congratulate her and schedule a meeting with no less than the Swarm Queens themselves to discuss her prize.

That had thrown her for a loop. She'd never really believed the Swarm would actually go that far for what was widely considered nothing more than a publicity stunt, but she was wrong. So very, very wrong. The embassy had assured her that the Swarm Queens _were _serious about the prize, not only the money but more importantly the offer to become one of Queen Diva's Chevaliers. Considering they were coming to Earth later in the week just to meet her, even publicly announcing the fact, she believed them.

It was all she ever wanted. But confronted by it, she couldn't help but be overcome with doubt. Why would the Swarm Queens want in plain old Pham Min? Surely, she wasn't _that _special? She might be smart, even a genius if her peers were to be believed, but there were plenty of other people as smart as she was, right?

If the prospect of the realization of her long cherished dream wasn't enough, there had been all the _other _offers she'd received. As soon as she got off the video call with the Chiropteran embassy, she'd been bombarded by calls, emails, PMs on websites she was a member of, etc. by individuals, institutions, and countries who wanted her to work for them. Oh, and there was a ton of requests from the media for interviews and the like too.

It was all too much for a poor country girl like her and so sneaking past the increased security that had been set up around her dorm - because of her! - she'd gone for a run. Running always helped her clear her head and she desperately needed that right now. She couldn't exactly make a decision on her future without calming down first.

It was working and she was starting to think straight again when shit hit the fan when a large black hover vehicle suddenly shimmered into existence directly in front of her.

"What the hell?" Min cried out in shock even as a squad of men in black suits rushed out of the vehicle and grabbed her.

She struggled and shouted for help but a man covered her mouth with a gag that was soaked in what she imagined was chloroform.

Within seconds, before any bystanders could even react, the kidnappers had bundled the now unconscious young genius into their vehicle which promptly began ascending into the air even as it shimmered out of sight.

* * *

A few days later, General Jack O'Neill-Carter found himself in the unenviable position of welcoming the Swarm Queens as their Hiveship exited hyperspace in the Sol system and inform them that the prospective Chevalier they'd traveled all the way there to meet had been kidnapped.

As Jack saw the immense spherical ship transit out of its hyperspace window while flanked on all vectors by an intimidatingly large escort fleet from the bridge of the _Thor_, he gulped and decided to bite the bullet.

"Hail them," he told the CO of the ship.

The viewscreen built into the observation window turned blue for a second before displaying the image of what must have been the Hiveship's bridge and a lone Chiropteran Vizier standing before the loveseat that served as the ship's command throne.

"Welcome to Sol," the Commander of the Homeworld Defense Fleet greeted the Chiropterans as diplomatically as he could manage even as he felt dread settling in the pit of his stomach. "Where're your Queens?"

_Please don't tell me they're doing what I think they're doing. _Jack hoped fervently even if he knew, based on the Queens' characters, that it was likely futile.

"They have gone, General O'Neill, to rescue Ms. Pham."

_I knew it! _Jack said palming his face. _This is totally gonna be a mess._

* * *

"Wake up!" The burly man that was Min's chief interrogator said as he tossed a cup of cold water in her face, jerking the young woman awake from her short nap. "Have you reconsidered our proposition?"

"No," Min choked out. "I'm not working for anyone that thinks kidnapping is a good part of recruitment."

"You do know we've being nice so far, right?" The man warned. "If you keep refusing, me and the boys will have to start getting rough with you."

"And how's that gonna earn my loyalty?" Min shot back.

"There's more than one way to skin a cat," The thug said with an unpleasant smile. "And plenty to keep an unwilling girl on a leash. Heard of Nishta? They say it's super effective."

Min shivered. She _had _heard of that alien drug and its brainwashing effects. The horror stories of how Goa'uld had used it across the millennia to enslave people were horrifying.

"You wouldn't dare!" Min shouted, terrified. "It would mess with my head and damage what you want, my mind."

"True," her captor conceded. "But there are other options. A smart girl like you should know that."

She did. And the prospect scared her like nothing else. Something that must have been obvious because the thug smiled with vicious pleasure at having managed to get a rise outta her.

He probably would have done more, maybe subject her to another long round of pointless interrogation to further break down her will but he was interrupted when one of his colleagues -Or is that henchmen? Min wasn't sure.- slammed the door to her cell open.

"We're under attack."

"Who? The SGC?" The thug in charge of her torment asked, sounding unfazed.

"Worse." The other man said. "It's the Chiropterans."

Both her tormentor and Min were thrown for a loop by this. The Chiropterans had come to rescue her? Why!?

She didn't have much of a chance to ponder the question when she was roughly seized by the main brute and pulled to her feet.

"Any chance to relocate?"

"They have us surrounded."

"No choice then. We've got to terminate the package." The thug manhandling her said with a frown while pulling a gun from under his suit jacket.

Min's eyes widened at the sight of the pistol and she began murmuring incomprehensible pleas for mercy.

"Sorry about this girl, but orders are orders." The man said sounding genuinely apologetic as he pressed his gun to Min's head.

What happened next took place so fast that Min had trouble keeping track. One second she had a gun to her head and was a hair's breadth from meeting her maker and the next a blue blur slammed into her and her would be killer. Min stumbled back as the the man and a petite figure struggled, the latter easily overpowering him, but not before he pulled a second gun and managed to take a shot.

"Argh!" Min screamed as she fell back, a horrendous pain burning in her side.

"Shit!" A beautiful blue eyed woman in a catsuit said as she appeared hovering over her. "He got your lungs. Maybe nicked your heart too."

_That sounds bad. _Min thought to herself deliriously.

"I didn't want it to go this way," the woman that the genius belatedly realized was the Swarm Queen Diva said in a rush. "But you're dying. So, uh, would you want to become my Chevalier?"

_Stupid question. _Min's fading mind thought. _Between that and death, what choice is there? Besides it's what I wanted in the first place._

Min struggled to reply, but only managed a bloody gargle. So instead she settled on a nod.

Smiling in a way that stirred something in Min she'd never really felt before, Diva bit her lip and leaned down to kiss her.

* * *

Alicia Miller had been a wreck ever since her roommate and best friend -though she hadn't told her that- Min had been kidnapped.

She'd been so worried for the other girl and though she'd known, and been told, that it was futile she'd been out searching for her everyday since she'd disappeared. She couldn't help it. She just couldn't stand sitting in their dorm and doing nothing. So she'd searched and searched until she was too tired to search any more.

Thus she was feeling utterly exhausted as she walked through the dorm to her room.

Even then she noticed that security had seemingly been stepped up again. It had been tight ever since Min had won that challenge but it seemed the number of guards had doubled again since then.

If Alicia had been in a better frame of mind she might have wondered why. As it was, she was too emotionally and physically drained to care.

As she finally reached the door to her room however something set her off. Hanging on the doorknob was a scarf. It was the signal she and Min had agreed on to indicate they had romantic company for the night, not that her roommate had ever used it. That girl was a recluse.

"Is this supposed to be a prank?" Alicia demanded angrily, as she ripped the scarf off and pulled the door open. "Because if it is then it's not fu-"

Her words died in her throat as she finally registered the scene in her dorm room. There on Min's bed was its owner, but she wasn't alone. Squished into the single sized bed, were a pair of twins. A pair of very famous twins. Min was in bed with the Chiropteran Swarm Queens! Naked!

"Min!" Alicia shouted as she spun away from the sight of one of the Swarm Queens between her best friend's legs and another sucking on her breasts.

"Alicia!?" Min squeaked in alarm. "Oh god! Didn't you see the scarf?"

Alicia honestly didn't know what to do in this situation. Walking in on her roommate was one thing. Walking in on her supposedly kidnapped roommate while she was having sex with a pair of alien heads of state was another. On the one hand, the smart thing to do was leave, but on the other… Min had just been kidnapped! Alicia wanted to make sure she was okay.

"Min~," a beautiful voice whined. "Why are we stopping?"

This was met with an exasperated sigh and Min's alarmed voice.

"It's my roommate, we, I, can't."

"Why not? She could join us." The beautiful voice said, sounding confused and causing Alicia to blush like a tomato.

Min squeaked in surprise and there was another sigh, before another unfamiliar and alluring voice spoke up.

"Miss Miller, perhaps you could come back in, hmm, a couple hours? I'm sure Min will love to catch up with you then."

"Saya! Only two hours!?" The first unknown voice, Diva apparently, said clearly disappointed.

"Uh, take your time." Alicia said as she reached for the dorm room door. "I'll go crash at a friend's place and come back in the morning. Min?"

"Uh, yeah?" Her best friend replied sounding mortally embarrassed.

"Have fun." Alicia said impishly as she closed the door.

All but skipping away from her dorm room, relieved that her best friend was safe and apparently having the time of her life, Alicia Miller fished out her phone.

"Now, who can I crash with tonight?"

* * *

Richard P. Woolsey had been through quite a lot in his life. He'd been an NID agent, the U.S. representative to the International Oversight Advisory for Extraterrestrial Operations, and most recently a senior member of the Homeworld Defence Organization's diplomatic corps. Despite all this, he nevertheless couldn't help the groan of frustration as he surveyed the mess he was supposed to clean up this time

"So let me get this straight," Richard said as he glared at the pair of Chiropteran Chevaliers sitting in his office. "Your Swarm Queens decided to launch a rescue mission for Ms. Pham on _our soil _without even telling us?"

"Yes," the male Chevalier, Louis, said with a smug smile. "They felt it was the quickest and easiest way to resolve the situation."

"Our deepest apologies for violating your sovereignty like that," the woman, Lucille, said sounding genuine. "But Diva was adamant that we did things the way we did."

"Didn't she realize the consequences for doing so?"

"Honestly, Mr. Woolsey, I doubt she cares." Lucille confessed.

Richard fought the urge to sigh in frustration.

"I believe my Queen thinks that asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission." Louis chimed in, still smiling smugly. "I do believe your governments have even set a precedent in regards to a similar incident not too long ago."

"The situation with Lady Nimue was completely different and you know it." Richard countered.

"Not where it matters." Lucille stressed. "In both cases, outsiders violated your territory but caused no harm. Even did some good for you. In Nimue's case, you let her get away with it after some concessions. Why not this time as well?"

_Because reinforcing the precedent is a bad idea. _Richard wanted to tell her, but couldn't. Not when his superiors was adamant that this be resolved exactly as she was suggesting. It honestly didn't bode well for their sovereignty if they allowed greater powers to act in their territory like this without permission, but then again what could Homeworld Defense do?

"Fine," Richard said with genuine reluctance. "What are you willing to offer us?"

"I knew you'd see things our way," Louis said with a predatory smirk. "The Swarm is willing to offer-"

Negotiations would carry on for weeks after that, but eventually even Richard was willing to admit Earth walked away with the better end of the deal this time. Having a state-of-the-art orbital shipyard built on your behalf as repayment for a minor territorial incursion? That was a good deal, no matter how cynical you were.

* * *

Min shook her head in amusement as Alicia jumped onto her bed in exhaustion after a long day of classes.

"How are you not exhausted?" Her best friend said as she tilted her head to look over at her. "You had eight classes today, just like me!"

"Chevalier," Min replied with a smirk while she put away her things.

"Your new physiology is bullshit, you know that?" Alicia said in exasperation.

"I know," Min agreed. "So are you too tired for dinner?"

"Hell no," Alicia said jumping to her feet. "I'm starving."

"Weren't you just saying you were exhausted?"

"Yeah, but I'm hungry too. I'll crash after I get something to eat."

"Alright," Min said, smiling at her roommate's antics. "So whatcha want for dinner?"

"You're not eating at the embassy tonight?" Alicia asked curiously.

"No one's there tonight, so nope." Min informed her. "Besides, a girl's gotta spend some time with her girlfriends sometimes right?"

"I think you spend lots of time with your _girlfriends _already." Alicia said with a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows.

"Oh hush you," Min said as she opened the door. "So what are we eating?"

"Vietnamese!" Alicia said, pumping her right arm enthusiastically into the air.

Min groaned. "I really shouldn't have introduced you to pho."

"Nonsense," Alicia said looping her arms with Min's own as they headed out the dorm. "It's delicious and you know it."

"Yeah, but I don't want to eat it every other day!"

* * *

Watching through his binoculars as the two young ladies walked out of their dorm arm in arm, Inspector Samuel Brown, formerly of SG19 and currently the leader of the Homeworld Defense Secret Service detail assigned to Chiropteran Chevalier Pham Min began barking orders to his men.

"Einstein is on the move with Besso, Team A tail them."

"Yes sir," the leader of Team A replied smartly.

"So sir, what do you think the girls are doing?" His partner in the observation nest they'd set up on a roof overlooking Ms. Pham's dorm said. The other man was a newbie, fresh out of training even, that he'd assigned to accompany him until he got his bearings.

"Off for dinner most likely," Samuel said as he put his binoculars aside and leaned back in his chair to grab a sip from the can of soda that sat on the side table next to it.

"Yeah, you're probably right." The other man said. "So is this job always so boring? I mean, I get that nothing going on is a good thing when on a security detail, but Einstein over there is like seriously boring. All she ever does is go to her classes, spend time in her dorm, or visit the Chiropteran embassy."

"Which is what makes this an easy job." Samuel reminded the rookie.

"I know, but isn't all this a waste of taxpayers' money? I mean, she's a Chevalier! Why does she even need to finish college? Betcha just tapping into her genetic memory would give her a better education than even MIT, probably a thousand times over."

"Probably." Samuel agreed. "But considering what the Chiropteran are giving us in exchange? I think playing along as their Swarm Queens indulge their newest Chevalier's whims is a small price to pay."

"So we're doing this because Einstein wants to play college girl and her Queens decided to let her?"

"Pretty much.

The newbie just groaned.

* * *

General George S. Hammond, head of Homeworld Defense and General Jack O'Neill watched from a control center on board the _Thor_ as Homeworld Defense Special Operations Command teams stormed a number of corporate offices and palatial private residences across the world.

"Did we get the last of them?" Hammond asked the operator manning the comms.

"Yes, sir. All teams are reporting that we have targets secured."

"Casualties?"

"Some light injuries, but nothing major."

"Good."

"Looks like we've got all of them." Jack said as he reviewed the information with a tablet computer.

"All the Directors of the Trust, yes." George agreed. "But there's still plenty of rank and file we need to clean up."

"That'll take a while." Jack acknowledged. "But at least this way we can tell the Swarm Queens we've got the heads of the snake."

George nodded, though he was privately peeved that it required pressure from a foreign power to get the nations of Earth to finally act against the Trust. _We should have cleaned them up long ago._

"I know what you're thinking George," Jack said putting a hand on his shoulder. "Just count ourselves lucky that it's done and not sweat the details."

George couldn't fully agree with that, but nevertheless nodded. He would count his victories where he could get them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> I'm kinda sad that this is the last Chiropteran-centric sidestory I could come up with. To that end, if you guys have any ideas on such stories please do contact me via PM or a review to let me know. I'll take anything suggested into consideration.
> 
> Well, that's it from me this time. Till the next sidestory, adieu!


	14. Continuum Averted

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Continuum Averted**

**One Shot**

**Beta: **

* * *

On the planet Praxyon, Ba'al had built a solar observation outpost that observe the system's star for flares. This was all to capitalise on a little fascinating tidbit of information his agents on Earth had forwarded to him. According to his spies, the Tau'ri had discovered that if one channeled a Chappa'ai's wormhole through a solar flare, time travel was possible. Hence, to gain access to the great power this would offer him, the Supreme System Lord had ordered construction of the observatory in which he now stood.

The feat was no easy one and required a great deal of precision and computing power to both bypass the ancient device's failsafes against such use and to properly target such temporal travel, but that was why Ba'al had spared no expense and filled the complex with bank upon endless bank of computers.

_The cost of all this was enough to build a whole fleet of ships, _Ba'al noted as he surveyed the outpost as the chevrons on the Chappa'ai spun into place. _But it will be worth it soon enough. Soon, I will kill Nimue before she even rose to power._

Ba'al could have chosen to use his newfound power to kill any number of his enemies, but he'd chosen to focus on Nimue first for one simple reason. She was the easiest target. Unlike the others like the Chiropterans and the accursed Tau'ri, pinpointing where to intervene to successfully disrupt their rise would be difficult. Despite his efforts, he did not have a full enough understanding of their histories as of yet to strike. Nimue's history on the other hand was something that was literally written into his genes. Her rise being a matter of record in his genetic memory.

_Besides getting the chance to wring that pretty neck of hers is something I've wanted to do for centuries._ Ba'al thought as his hands flexed in anticipation.

"My lord," his First Prime turned to address him as the last chevron locked into place and the wormhole formed. "On your order."

"Toss grenades," the System Lord ordered with a sadistic grin. "Let's give Nimue a welcoming present to her new world."

Nodding whilst grinning as well, the Jaffa gave the order and his men obeyed, tossing dozens of various grenades through the wormhole onto what was the pristine fields of what in this timeline would be Nimue's famed first throneworld of Hogwarts.

_And what will soon will be her grave._

"Send the men through," Ba'al ordered. "Give no quarter."

"Ye-"

The burly Jaffa froze mid sentence and Ba'al felt a chill go down his spine as he noticed everything around him had likewise stilled. Even the wormhole had stopped rippling! It was as if time itself had stopped flowing.

"That's because it has," a feminine voice said in a sickly sweet voice that had the System Lord spinning around to stare in horror at Nimue.

He pushed aside his terror quickly though and raised his kara kesh to send a kinetic blast at the monster but he'd barely moved the arm where he wore the weapon when he suddenly found himself unable to move.

Completely unperturbed by his attempt to attack her, the blasted woman just continued her explanation.

"For the most part at least. I've pulled you to the lower levels of the Ascended Plane you see and altered the local flow of time there in comparison to the rest of the world for good measure. You could say we're outside of time at the moment."

_How? _Ba'al thought even as he realized with dread that his paralysis was total. He could not even move his mouth to speak.

"How am I doing this?" Nimue asked with a smirk. "I am a powerful Ascended Being. While this is hardly child's play for one of my kind, it is well within _my _power. Or perhaps you're asking how I knew to intervene? Well, it's really the same answer. Did you know that attempting time travel causes ripples to occur that we can detect, especially if it affects our own timelines?"

_Then-_

"The moment your temporal wormhole connected I felt it and immediately intervened. It was a simple matter of redirecting it too. So instead of your grenades ending up on Hogwarts as I unearthed its Chappa'ai, they ended up rolling into an empty field on an uninhabited world."

_Surely the other Ascended Beings won't stand for th-_

"Actually, they will." Nimue told him tauntingly. "When it comes to protecting our own timeline the Others impose no restrictions on their fellow Ascended. Besides even if they did, I would ignore any rules prohibiting what amounts to self-defense on my part."

_I'm going to die here aren't I?_

"That's the first smart thing you've said today." Nimue said with mocking applause. "Congratulations Ba'al! You're not quite the idiot I thought you were. Sadly, you're still going to die though. Aur revoir~!"

The last thing Ba'al saw in his life was a bright white flash as Nimue's form exploded outwards in a storm of lightning that destroyed everything it touched.

* * *

Even as Ba'al died on Praxyon, another iteration of the Supreme System Lord walked into his bedchamber within his palace on Canaan with a concubine on each arm after a hard day of ruling what remained of the Goa'uld Empire. It was a thankless job and the Goa'uld was looking forward to a night of debauchery to make up for his efforts.

Unfortunately it was not to be.

He'd barely stepped through the doors before the women screamed at the sight before them.

Impaled on the walls of the room were the brutalized corpses of his clones. All twelve of them! And written in their blood between the bodies was a message.

_Ba'al, do not presume to temper with time again or face my wrath! - Nimue_

This alone was infuriating enough but it seemed misfortune liked company, as just then, as if on cue, a servant rushed over.

"My lord," the human slave shouted urgently. "Emergency dispatch from Praxyon!"

"Report," Ba'al barked, but the fool had caught a glimpse of the grisly scene in his chambers and had frozen.

Growling in anger, the System Lord slapped the man with a powerful backhand that left him sprawling on the ground.

"**Give me your report now!"** Ba'al demanded angrily in the booming voice of the Goa'uld.

"P-Prax-yon." The man stuttered fearfully at his god's rage. "It's been destroyed, my lord."

"**What!?" **The System Lord shouted incredulously. "**How?"**

"Unknown, my lord. But the garrison reports sighting lightning matching descriptions of Lady Nimue's use of her Ascended magic moments before the planet imploded."

Any other Goa'uld would have likely raged at the news, infuriated at the loss of a world and all its resources at the hands of a rival. But Ba'al was not the average Goa'uld. He had reached the heights he now occupied through the use of his greatest talent: a ruthless cunning untainted by the megalomania that plagued so many of his brethren. It was this cunning that allowed him to set aside his anger and judge the news objectively.

It was this judgement that caused him to pale in terror.

_Praxyon is in the heart of my domain! If Nimue can destroy it just like that… What's stopping her from doing that to all my worlds? Or just kill me where I stand?_

"Be gone," Ba'al ordered his slaves in a shaken voice.

Despite his uncharacteristic tone, or perhaps because of it, the humans obeyed and rushed away from his presence.

The Supreme System Lord waited until they were gone before he took a steadying breath and walked into his desecrated chambers and addressed the empty air.

"Nimue," he said with all the confidence he could muster. "I know you can hear me. I'll abide by your demand for now, but know that one day I will have revenge for this affront."

_Be lucky, Ba'al, that I still have use for you and your pathetic Remnant. _Nimue whispered directly into his mind. _Or I'd have used this stunt you pulled to wipe you and your ilk from the stars entirely.  
_

Ba'al just shivered as a primal part of him told him that her words were no boast.

With one final tinkling laugh of haughty amusement at his expense, the monster's presence retreated leaving him pale and shaking in fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> Just a shot one-shot to deal with the little time travel trick Ba'al used in the Continuum movie. That and show that he and his Goa'uld Remnant, in a sense, really just live at the sufferance of Nimue and her friends.
> 
> I don't mean that the Coalition can just crush it in a direct military confrontation. Whilst that might be possible, such a war would completely deplete/devastate the Coalition. A point I made with one shot, the Neo Ugarit Disaster. No, what I mean is that as Ascended they can essentially use their powers and wipe the Remnant off the map if given just cause like when Ba'al attempts to erase Nimue from history using his time travel device. However, instead she limited her response to destroying the device (and the planet it was built into), killing all of Ba'al's clones, and reminding him not to do something so stupid again. Since no one really knows the scope of what she can do (no one knows at this point, not the Others or even herself), who can second guess whether she did all she could get away with (she didn't) or held back (she did)? They can accuse her, of course, but they won't get much traction from without nonexistent proof.
> 
> Was it right for her to let such an opportunity go? Well, asking that question is precisely the point of this chapter.
> 
> Last point, some might be wondering what use Nimue might have for Ba'al and his Goa'uld Remnant. If you are one of them, check out the War of the Ascended Interlude on the Galactic Cold War. The reasons are outlined there.
> 
> Well, that's it for this post. Till next time, ciao~!


	15. Quarantine

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Quarantine**

**One Shot**

**Beta: **

* * *

Deep in uncharted space, Loutal led a small specially equipped stealth fleet from the Pel'tak of his Ha'tak flagship, the _Silent_ _Wanderer_, as it tracked unusual Remnant fleet movements. A necessity to avoid a repeat of the Remnant Invasion of the Twelve Colonies and the Neo Ugarit Disaster that followed. Having played a part of the latter catastrophic campaign, Loutal was adamant on the need to prevent such a thing from occurring ever again.

He was waiting on reports from the pilots that he'd ordered to scout ahead with their Al'kesh. So far none of them had found anything significant. Though there were still a handful who had yet to report in and he was hopeful that one of them would have good news.

"My lord," his comms officer said. "We have another of the Al'kesh on the line."

"Put him through," Loutal ordered as he leaned back in the command throne to hear the latest report.

"My lord," the Jaffa greeted him with a salute that Loutal returned. "I think I might have found what is motivating the Remnant's strange behavior."

"Oh," Loutal asked, not wanting to get his hopes up just yet. "And what is that?"

The Jaffa captain just shared an image of Goa'uld Remnant ships devastating a force of vastly inferior ships whose designs tended towards the use of rounded edges.

* * *

Reshi waited patiently as the newly mustered Coalition fleet under her command, consisting of 1 Mel'tak, 1 _O'Neill_, 3 _Bilskirnir_s, 33 Ha'tak, 20 _Bonaparte_s, 37 Shel'tak, 30 Re'tak, 99 Al'kesh, 118 Ohne destroyers, 12 _Prometheus_, 8 _Daedalus_, 4 of the Orbanian's cruisers with their three connected ovoid sections, 2 crescent shaped Gadmeer cruisers studded with various domed protrusions, 4 Kobolian Battlestars, 8 Cylon Basestars, 100 _Résurrection_, and 207 Reetou frigates formed up into their formations in deep space near the contested systems as she prepared to rescue the uncontacted race from the Goa'uld Remnant.

_This is the Coalition's first major engagement with the Remnant since the Neo Ugarit Disaster. _Reshi thought, as she psyched herself for the task ahead. _I can't allow it to be a repeat of the debacle._

"My lady, Lord Loutal is on the comms."

"On screen," Reshi ordered and waited for a brief moment before her husband's handsome face appeared on the central viewscreen, replacing the shifting formations of her fleet that previously dominated the view.

"I've recovered the last of my Al'kesh." Loutal informed her. "I'll be withdrawing now."

"Leave the rest to me," Reshi assured him.

"Just be careful," Loutal told her. "The twins need you."

Reshi shook her head in amusement at her husband's overprotectiveness.

"I'll be fine." Reshi told him firmly. "Now get going. I have a campaign to fight."

Loutal nodded, offering her one last loving look before signing off.

There were light titters from her crew at their banter but none of it was malicious. While they were on duty and it was unprofessional, they weren't in combat and it wasn't exactly a crime. Either her behavior, her spouse's or the amusement of their subordinates. At least that was the case by standards in the Albionian Navy.

"Alright ladies," Reshi said, her voice raised to signal that it was time to be serious. "Let's do this. Are all ships in position?"

"Yes, my lady." The sensors officer reported back. "We are ready to fold at your command."

"Then fold!"

At her command, a bubble of energy expanded out from her flagship, the Mel'tak _Righteous Hand_, and encompassed the entire Coalition fleet before blinking out of existence a moment later.

Seconds after it disappeared the same bubble of energy reappeared over the last system held by the unknowns. In high orbit over the only inhabited world in the system, a world currently besieged by a single new type dreadnought, 88 Ha'tak, 157 Shel'tak, and 306 Al'kesh of the Goa'uld Remnant, the bubble blinked out of existence and deposited the Coalition fleet in the process. The new Goa'uld dreadnought - that they were calling Xol'taks, if intelligence was correct - was defined by two prongs that gave it a T-shaped bow with a long indentation in the center that cut through to almost midship, that jutted out of a large pyramid.

_I'll need to be careful of that dreadnought's main gun. _Reshi noted as her forces began to close with the enemy. _If intel is correct, it's a copy of an Ori dreadnought's primary weapon. Nothing I haven't handled before, but still something to be wary about._

"Hail the locals," Reshi ordered.

"Connection established, my lady." Her comms officer replied as a video link of a man in a utilitarian looking long garment that vaguely resembled an attempt to blend a robe with a suit together.

"Greetings," Reshi said without preamble. She was a sailor not a diplomat. If she ruffled any feathers today while saving these people from the Goa'uld she'd leave it to the actual diplomats to smooth things over later. "I represent the Coalition of Free Peoples and we're here to help in your fight against the Goa'uld."

"Thank you," the man said earnestly. "On behalf of the Aschen Confederation, we thank you."

"Pull your ships back," Reshi told the man as she glanced at the tactical display. These Aschen had only a dozen frigate and a couple destroyer analogues left. All underpowered and damaged. They wouldn't be any use in the battle ahead. "And leave the rest of us."

"Acknowledged. Thank you again."

Reshi waited until the tactical display showed the Aschen ships disengaging before turning to the man again. "No thanks are necessary. Now, it you'll excuse me, I have a battle to fight."

The man looked a little surprised but Reshi didn't bother to wait for him to say anything else before cutting the connection. Immediately, she began ordering her ships to spread out and move to surround the enemy fleet. She had a significant advantage in firepower and she was ready to use it.

The enemy fleet tried to maneuver out of her closing vice but they'd been formed up into a large clump to facilitate a ground invasion when she'd arrived and thus were slow to respond. Thus despite their best efforts, Reshi's forces easily englobed them and were able to rather handily dispatch the Goa'uld fleet.

In the aftermath, as Reshi reorganized her forces into a defensive grid over the planet, she took a moment to ponder what would happen to the locals now. In hindsight, the name Aschen tickled something in her memory but for the life of her, she couldn't remember what it was.

Dismissing the whole train of thought as irrelevant and something that the diplomatic team would handle, she turned to the matter at hand.

* * *

A couple days later found Pham Min, Chevalier of Diva, in an underground lab as she examined a caged orb of ominously glowing blue light that was one of the Aschen's biogenic weapons that the Coalition had recently secured from one of their worlds that had been liberated from Goa'uld occupation.

Min who was in her combat form looked very similar to a pteranodon. There were only three major difference from the body plan of the prehistoric flying reptile. Firstly, where a pteranodon's crest should have been, Min instead had a translucent black carapace that was roughly the same shape but filled almost entirely with her massive engorged brain. Secondly, she had the equine jaw characteristic of her race. And lastly, growing out of her torso were a second set of spindly looking arms that ended in long deceptively delicate looking fingers tipped with retractable claws.

It was with these arms that she operated the myriad of diagnostic devices she'd brought along and used them to scan the weapon in front of her. She was helped in this task by a dozen or so Workers who scurried from device to device as they tried to make sense of the readings.

Looking up from reviewing the data of her scans about the weapon, she turned to Louis, her escort. He too like her was in his true form and was keeping a careful watch of their surroundings alongside a squad of Warriors.

_Is it really necessary for me to remain in my true form? _She whined. _This lab was built for humans, it's getting in the way._

_It is prudent that you do so, _her brother Chevalier reminded her. _We are still technically in hostile territory. We have not fully secured this planet. There are still Goa'uld forces about._

_But _this lab _is secure, isn't it?_

_Perhaps, _Louis conceded. _But only of the Goa'uld. I do not trust the Aschen to not have left behind some nasty surprises._

_Okay, that I can buy. The Aschen are a nasty piece of work. _Min agreed. _If half these readings on this weapon is accurate and I _know _they are, I wouldn't trust them either._

_How bad?_

"It can wipe out any specific DNA strand its tuned to, effectively killing any target in possession of that genetic material." Min said with a shake of her head, having to actually say out her findings. It was so incredulous that just keeping it in her head, even during a telepathic conversation, made it seem unreal.

Louis hissed in alarm.

"Yeah, that's what freaked me out too. Did they really attempt to use this against Earth just because they were found out trying to trick everyone as to their intentions?"

"They did." General Carter-O'Neill said as she walked into the lab, having just arrived from Earth to assist in the study of the biogenic weapon.

Min would have spazzed out at meeting one of her idols but the seriousness of the topic at hand, cooled her enthusiasm.

Looking back to the weapon, she frowned. "We can't let them keep these weapons."

"I'm sure our Queens will do everything in their power to strip it from them." Louis assured her.

"As, I'm sure, will most of Earth's governments." The General added. "And I'm sure most of the other Coalition members can be convinced of the same."

* * *

**The Aschen: Should they be allowed to join the Coalition?**

As I'm sure anyone even vaguely interested in galactic affairs, which I assume you are if you're reading this blog, are aware the Aschen Confederation recently applied for admittance into the Coalition of Free Peoples.

How did this come about? Here's a brief summary:

The events that led to the Aschen Confederation's application to the Coalition was the conflict _they _initiated with the Goa'uld Remnant. Yes, they started it. That is not in doubt.

The Confederation was an aggressive expansionist power, as evidenced by their previous interactions with the Tau'ri. (_To see more click here_) They were however limited by their primitive, slow hyperdrive and a limited catalogue of Stargate addresses which gave them only a small area of operation.

As a result of their location, barring their brief interaction with the Tau'ri and after having subsumed all their other neighbors, the Aschen had only one possible neighbor they could possibly contact next: the Goa'uld Remnant.

To their credit, the Aschen were smart enough to covertly study the Goa'uld before making contact. They decided that their typical methodology of subtle infiltration and manipulating their targets into destroying themselves would not work with the more advanced Remnant. They instead chose to launch a first strike with their biogenic weapons, wiping out all life on dozens of Remnant worlds.

However, the Aschen had dramatically underestimated the capability of the Goa'uld. They mistook the domain of one of the Remnant's minor System Lords as the whole Empire. As such instead of crippling the Goa'uld, their first strike, devastating though it was, had only served to inconvenience and anger the Empire.

What followed was a massive counterattack against the Aschen that the genesmiths were utterly unprepared to withstand.

They would have been rendered extinct if not for Albion forces investigating the unexpected Remnant fleet movements discovering the massacre. In response, they led the Coalition in rescuing the Aschen.

What followed, as expected, was the Aschen Confederation requesting admittance to the Coalition. This however did not go over well with some members, particularly the Tau'ri. They looked at what the Aschen had done in the past and attempted to do to the Earth, and were leery of them. To that effect, they demanded that the Aschen had to dismantle their biogenic weapons as a precondition for considering their admittance request.

The Aschen however countered that many Coalition members had their own WMDs such as the Goa'uld successor states' Worldbreaker weapons; and the Tau'ri and Langaran's Horizon weapons

The Tau'ri however countered that unlike the Aschen these weapons were meant as a deterrent and as a last resort, contrasting it with the Aschen's attempt to preemptively use the weapon on Earth during the Volia Incident.

The Swarm, in an unexpected move, backed the Tau'ri on this issue. This prompted Albion to follow their lead as well. With these two heavyweights against them there was no way that the Aschen's request would pass. And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened.

Instead, they were given observer status in the Coalition. A status below even the non-spacefaring and thus non-voting members of the Coalition. All it amounts to is a guarantee by the Coalition to protect the Confederation from external threats like the Goa'uld Remnant. In practical terms, it allows the Coalition to maintain a military force in Aschen space. Something, which Nimue confessed to me is really as much a means to contain the Aschen as to protect them.

Was this the right thing to do? Who knows?

**Update!**

As some of you who follow the news know the last Aschen world, Neuvo Aschen, was subject to the detonation of one of their own biogenic weapons. This has led to the eradicating of all life on the planet.

All evidence suggests this was sabotage on the part of an Ashrak from the Goa'uld Remnant. However, conspiracy theories implicating the Coalition abound. I've spoken to Nimue on the matter and she insists Albion at least had no involvement in this. However, she confesses that she wouldn't rule the conspiracy theories out entirely as some Coalition members, and she emphasized not those we'd usually suspect, would be inclined to if not outright help the Goa'uld in destroying the Aschen then at least turn a blind eye to it.

Whoever is responsible and whatever the Aschen may have done, I think we can all acknowledge that the loss of so many lives is heartbreaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> So this sidestory implies that "2010" and "2001" from Stargate canon happened in the WoLverse and they did. However "2010" was suitably different and much more dystopian. I won't write it but basically it saw the Aschen and their Earth vassals fighting a galactic war against the Coalition which formed against them due to the Aschen use of their bioweapons against Yu and Nimue. At the same time, Anubis has also rallied the remaining Goa'uld against everyone. While this is going on, Earth is in a state of Civil War between the Aschen vassals including the USA & the free countries led by France backed by the Coalition. This timeline is averted when the resistance led by SG-1 sends a message through time after spending years, as a result of limited resources, trying to calculate the correct use of the Gate to do so.
> 
> On another note, that's the last loose end to this verse that I think needs to be tied and hence the last of my planned sidestories. Like with prompts for ideas about stories centering around the Chiropterans, I likewise welcome any prompts for stories in general so feel free to send them to me. This excepting the Pegasus Galaxy side of this verse. I'm already working on that, though don't expect any releases on that front anytime soon as it's still only in the planning stages.
> 
> Well, till I see you all again... Peace!


	16. The End of the Lucian Alliance

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: The End of the Lucian Alliance**

**One Shot**

**Beta:**

* * *

**Trigger warning: Execution, hints of incest**

Netan, former leader of the Lucian Alliance, sat in this cell aboard one of the Chiropterans' warships and stared at its blank featureless walls. He'd been locked in here for hours and had been unable to do anything but review everything that had led him to where he was now.

It had all started so brilliantly. In the wake of the collapse of the Goa'uld Empire, the many criminal entities and other shady organizations that existed in its shadows had seized much of the resources and technology the snakes were forced to abandon as they were forced into ignominious defeat. Into this chaotic free for all, Netan had stepped in and rallied a sizable number of these groups into a single powerful force: the Lucian Alliance.

United he'd hoped to exploit their combined might to fill a portion of the power vacuum left by the Goa'uld's fall and seize a place among the stars for the Alliance. Unfortunately, he'd miscalculated. The vacuum did not last anywhere long enough to fulfill his ambitions. Within months, long before the Alliance had even finished securing its holdings, the vacuum was filled by a new superpower: the Coalition of Free Peoples.

And the Coalition did not forget what the Alliance had done to claim its meager holdings. In order to do so, it had cheated and brutalized dozens of worlds. Worlds that quickly joined the Coalition and sought redress. Something that the Coalition was only all too happy to provide. Within weeks, Netan had been forced to watch as all his hard work was demolished by Coalition fleets as they 'liberated' the worlds the Alliance had 'subjugated' and decimated the small fleet that they'd managed to amass.

The blow was so swift and powerful that it immediately shattered the Alliance. Any control he might have had over its disparate factions broke down the moment the Coalition hammer came down and they each attempted different ways to survive. Some factions immediately renounced the Alliance and defected to the Coalition. Others had disappeared back into the shadows whence they came, abandoning overt rule and returning to being organizations operating in the shadowy forgotten corners of the galaxy. Only the foolish had tried to fight and paid the price for it.

Netan, he was honest enough to admit, had tried to fight. With a dozen worlds under his command and a fleet of hundreds of ships, he'd thought he'd stood a chance. Not to win. He wasn't quite so foolish. But he'd at least hoped to make defeating him costly enough that the Coalition would negotiate and allow him to retain some power. Sadly, he'd underestimated the Coalition's might and resolve. They'd steamrolled his forces and was poised to destroy him utterly when they got distracted.

The Neo Ugarit Disaster had given him a reprieve. The losses the Coalition had sustained in that one debacle meant they could no longer press their advance against him. Their ships were simply needed elsewhere. He'd tried to capitalize on this and call for negotiations, but his earlier defiance had earned him no favors and he was rebuffed.

Knowing that it was only a matter of time before the Coalition once more turned their attention to him and finished him off for good, he'd gathered what resources he could and fled into uncharted space. He'd reasoned that it was better to try his luck with the unknown than face inevitable destruction.

But he couldn't escape them.

Just hours ago he'd been celebrating the discovery of an inhabitable world that he could use as a base from which to rebuild when his forces were ambushed. He still remembered the terrifying sight of a series of hyperspace windows opening, disgorging an entire squadron of Chiropteran battleships who proceeded to remorselessly tear his two Ha'tak and dozen Al'kesh to pieces.

In the aftermath, he'd been dragged off the ruins of his personal Ha'tak and dragged to where he was now.

_Where I await my fate. _Netan thought with the fatalism of a condemned man. _The Chiropterans will show me no mercy._

* * *

_Bring the prisoner. _Amelia ordered through the Hivemind and her Warriors moved to obey.

"So what are we gonna do with him?" Pamela asked from where she was running a brush down an embarrassed looking Surefoot's equine flank.

"There is already a kill order on his head issued by the Coalition, is there not?" Rek'tor said with an unconcerned shrug. "I suppose we should just carry out the sentence."

"But that's boring~!"

"B-But it's the, um, right thing to do." Surefoot told her Queen hesitantly.

Pamela pouted even as she shot her Chevalier a betrayed look.

"Whatever we intend to do, we best decide now. The Warriors are almost here with the prisoner." Amelia informed her childish twin.

"Well, then just kill him I guess." Pamela said in a whine. "Even though it's such a waste."

"I'm sure you have ideas for plenty of cruel and unusual punishments. But it's _precisely _because they are cruel and unusual that we will not make use of them." Amelia told her twin firmly.

"Aw~ That's no fun."

Rolling her eyes at her twin, Amelia turned to watch as a pair of her Warriors hauled the defeated looking leader of the Lucian Alliance before her.

"Netan of the Lucian Alliance," Amelia greeted.

"Just Netan," the man corrected in a whisper that if the Hive Queen had been human she'd have missed. "The Alliance is dead. I'm just Netan now."

Amelia raised an eyebrow at the unexpected admission. She had not thought he'd be ready to admit the demise of his organization so easily. He was after all by all accounts a prideful man, particularly in regards to the admittedly impressive achievement of forging his small, if short lived, empire.

"I'm glad you can accept that." Amelia told him, letting him see none of her surprise. "It means you will at least die with no delusions."

The man nodded. "I accept my fate."

"Do it." Amelia commanded.

Heeding her order, the Warrior on Netan's right grabbed hold of his head in both of its large hands and in a single twisting motion ripped the man's head off.

"And so ends the Lucian Alliance." Pamela declared before chuckling. "Now that's done, why don't we go do something _interesting_."

"What do you have in mind?" Amelia asked even as she telepathically instructed her Warriors to go preserve Netan's head. They'd need to hand it over to the Coalition to prove that the fugitive was dead.

Smiling mischievously, Pamela sent her a smouldering look as she made a come hither gesture. "I might have a few ideas."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! Another chapter even though the story is marked as complete? If you liked it, thank my muse for giving me the idea.
> 
> You might also be pleased to know that I'm using this chapter to announce that the last installment of the War of Legends verse, Pegasus War, is ready for release. For those of you interested it should be out shortly. I hope to see you all there.
> 
> Till then, paalam!


	17. The Destiny Expedition

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: The Destiny Expedition**

**One Shot**

**Beta:**

* * *

Hello everyone!

It's me again. Today we'll be covering one of the Coalition's two latest major joint projects. Specifically, the Destiny Expedition.

**Background**

This project is a direct result of the phenomenal success of the Atlantis Expedition which galvanised the Coalition to follow in its footsteps in the hopes of yielding similar results. Thus it has at the urging of the new Tau'ri Alliance decided to embark on two new ambitious operations. Today, I will be exploring the first of these new endeavours: The Destiny Expedition.

Using data extracted from Earth's Ancient Repository of Knowledge, and if Nimue is to be believed post-coital loose lips on the part of her wife that got them both quite the grilling from the Others, the Alliance has been able to determine the special nine-chevron Stargate address for a ship the Ancients called the _Destiny_.

This ship was originally launched from Earth more than fifty million years ago to decipher the pattern in the cosmic microwave background radiation they had detected around the time they began building the Stargates. Recognizing that this pattern could not have been natural in origin, the Ancients concluded that its presence suggested an order to the universe never thought possible, possibly some kind of message. However, the message was fragmented and could not be recovered. To that end, they devoted the efforts of an entire generation to the construction of _Destiny_, the purpose of which was to find and reassemble the fragments, completing the message.

Automated ships were sent ahead of _Destiny _to explore the universe, seeding Stargates along their path. It was their intention to further their knowledge of the Universe, but they abandoned the project as they started researching into Ascension. Nonetheless, the _Destiny _continued to go from planet to planet, system to system, galaxy to galaxy for tens of millions of years.

**The Mission**

It is the hope of the Alliance and the Coalition that they could complete the _Destiny_'s original mission whilst also analyzing its relatively primitive Ancient technologies as a means of bettering their understanding of more advanced iterations of such recovered from both the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies.

This Expedition is widely regarded as the most ambitious project of its type to be attempted by the Coalition as it will likely be operating extremely far from Coalition space and thus immediate support, beyond what limited assistance can be provided via Stargate.

This is exasperated by the expectation that the _Destiny_, though confirmed to be intact, has likely sustained significant damage as a result of its long journey and simple neglect from being left unmanned far longer than intended. Hence, the Coalition is recruiting only the best and brightest for this Expedition who will both repair the time-worn Ancient vessel so that it may carry out its mission and allow them to do theirs.

On that note, I would like to say that I was flattered General O'Neill would extend an invitation to me but I must publicly decline. I happen to be getting married soon and will not be jeopardizing my happily ever after to go traipsing halfway across the observable universe. So please stop sending me emails or I'll hex you!

P.S. Jack stop or I'll pay you a visit. - Nim

P.P.S. Yes, you're still invited to the wedding. Just please stop bugging Hermione with invites to the Expedition! - Her fiancé, Ron Weasley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> So here's the only coverage I'll be giving to Stargate: Universe in the WoLverse. I didn't particularly like that series so will not be touching it. Sorry for anyone who wanted me to do so.
> 
> A handful of other one shots are incoming. Hope you guys will join me there too.
> 
> Till then, punarmilāma!


	18. The Exterminatus Campaign

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: The Exterminatus Campaign**

**One Shot**

**Beta:**

* * *

Hello my loyal readers!

Today I'll be following up on my last post on the Destiny Expedition by covering the other major joint project the Coalition is launching in the wake of the success of the Atlantis Expedition: the Exterminatus Campaign.

**The Exterminatus Campaign**

The Exterminatus Campaign is the second major endeavour for the Coalition fresh off its formation and the successes of the Atlantis Expedition. Proposed by the new Tau'ri Alliance, it amounts to a concerted, prolonged campaign to finally and totally wipe out the Goa'uld Remnant. Hence its rather ominous title which was of course suggested by none other than the galaxy's greatest joker, General O'Neill. Apparently, he's a Warhammer 40k fan. So is Nimue, she likes them filthy Tau by the way. Blegh! The Aledari are so much better but I digress.

There are unfortunately few details about this new military campaign that I can share due to Operational Security, but what I can say is that it'll involve the entire military might of the Coalition this time and not just the Coalition Joint Fleet like in the failed Operation Emancipation. Furthermore this time there will be no retreat. The Coalition has decided that by the end of this campaign, hell or high water, the Goa'uld Remnant will cease to exist.

All I can say to that is… It's about time!

P.S. Ba'al, I'm coming for you and this time I won't stop till you're dead. - Nimue

P.P.S. Before anyone asks, I have no idea what Nimue means by 'this time'. Everytime I ask, she just gives me this creepy smile so I've stopped asking. - Hermione, the galacticpolitics blogger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> For any 40k fans out there in my readership, I hope you liked all the references. I really like the franchise and would've loved to added more nods into the main stories but couldn't really manage it. So I'll settle for the small nods to the awesome fictional universe I did manage to slip in. I don't really play the tabletop but if I did… I'll totally play Tyranids.
> 
> Just one more one shot left. See you there!
> 
> Till then, novaer!


	19. Honeymoon Earth

**Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the IPs from which any imported elements may originate.**

**The Wars of Legends**

**Sidestory: Honeymoon Earth**

**One Shot**

**Beta:**

* * *

With a burst of light, a hyperspace window opened in one of the few gaps in the Earth's protective interdiction fields allowing the USS _Theseus _to return to normal space. Surrounded by dozens of defensive satellites and space stations, the BC-304 finished the last leg of its journey back to its homeworld at sublight under the watchful eyes, and guns, of its comprehensive defence network.

Onboard this warship were Terence and Yelana as they headed to Earth for their honeymoon. They'd originally intended to simply use the Intergalactic Gate Bridge to Gate back over from _Atlantis _however the bridge had rather inconveniently suffered something of a malfunction caused by one of its constituent Gates being knocked out of place by an unexpected flyby of a rogue planet. This had forced them to make the trip by the relatively much slower ship instead.

However, as the couple gazed out at the awe inspiring view of Earth's orbit from an observation lounge as the _Theseus _cruised towards the planet, they couldn't help but think that perhaps the view alone made the longer trip worth it.

"Terence, what are they doing?" Yelana asked, pointing towards a trio of _Prometheus_-class destroyers as they gracefully soared just above the blue marble that was the planet leaving behind trails of small diamond shaped objects as they went.

"They're adding to the defense net." Terence told her. "See those satellites they're deploying? Those are Tollan Defense Satellites."

Yelana blinked and surveyed the many such satellites already in orbit in addition to the forms of the much larger Lantean Satellites off in the distance.

"That's a lot of defense satellites."

Terence chuckled. "It is. I think Homeworld Defense is aiming to make the Earth the world with the most comprehensive defense net in the Coalition though, so there'll be more, a lot more, by the time they're done."

Yelana just looked at him in disbelief. Uneasy with the look, Terence rubbed the back of his neck nervously and searched around for a distraction.

"Lana, look at those." Terence said a little too quickly as he pointed to another formation of _Prometheus_ destroyers as they flew close to the atmosphere surrounded by a white glow.

"What about them?"

"They're doing something amazing." Terence told her enthusiastically. "They're extracting excess carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere using their transporter beams as part of the Homeworld Defense's environmental programme."

"They can do that?" Yelana gasped in wonder.

"With a little tweaking to the systems, yes. We're using the same set up to clean up the seas of all kinds of pollution and to clean up any litter floating around up here in orbit too, though I don't see any of those ships around."

"Amazing. But why is it necessary at all?"

"Well, we Tau'ri haven't always been very responsible in how we treated our homeworld's environment." Terence confessed with a nervous shuffle.

"At least you're fixing it now."

Mentally chiding himself for bringing up _another _uncomfortable topic, Terence searched the view for something to change the topic again. Something safe this time.

"Oh! Over there in the distance! Can you see it? That's the orbital shipyards the Chiropterans gifted Earth."

Said shipyard was a massive structure located at one of Earth's Lagrangian points and even from the great distance between it and the _Theseus _Terence could see the dozens of glowing lights that were unmistakably ships moving to and from it. The huge structure was divided into a rectangular outer section with docks for ships to load and unload goods and a circular inner section consisting of an outer ring of structures divided into a series of docking bays for ship maintenance, along with a cylindrical module at its centre that was connected to the rest of the structure by a series of thin flying buttress looking sections.

"It looks a lot like the Lantean Hive's shipyards back in the ocean back home." Yelana commented as she eyed the megastructure intently.

"Well, it _is _developed and built by the same people."

"Yes, but this is in space! Surely they'd, I dunno, try something different."

Terence just shrugged.

"Oh look at that!" Yelana said pointing to a gigantic cylinder that seemed just to hang in space came into view. "What is that?"

"That's the _Temasek_." Terence said proudly. "It's the modular cityship I told you my home country was building."

"The one you helped with before you joined the Expedition?"

"Yup."

"Wow! It's incredible. It looks bigger than _Atlantis_."

"In its current state? It probably about the same size, at least in mass." Terence said thoughtfully. "It's modular though so it'll likely get bigger eventually."

"Your people have truly surpassed the Ancestors."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"I would." Yelana told him earnestly. "Maybe not in terms of your technology. Not yet. But you've done things the Ancestors failed to do. And in that way you've surpassed them."

"I suppose we have." Terence said, humming to himself thoughtfully.

* * *

A few days later found Terence waiting on his wife in the Presidential Suite of The Fullerton Bay Hotel in Singapore that they'd been provided for the duration of their stay on Earth. It was one of the most expensive hotel suites in the country, but since their honeymoon was an all expense paid trip courtesy of no less than the Prime Minister himself they had decided to splurge. It was, in the statesman's words, a reward for Terence's exemplary actions in the name of Singapore in the Pegasus.

Terence hadn't done what he'd done for his country but he wasn't about to tell the Prime Minister that. Not when the misunderstanding got them such luxurious digs for their honeymoon.

_This beats staying in my room back in Mom and Dad's flat. By a mile! _Terence thought as he rested on the suite's bed as his wife finished putting the final touches to her makeup for the day.

Not for the first time, he cursed how foolish he was for introducing Yelana to his female cousins yesterday. Sure he'd been away for years and probably wouldn't have been a good guide, but calling them in had definitely been a mistake. Surely he'd have managed to navigate Orchard Road without them! Thanks to the brats now his precious, innocent wife had been corrupted by the temptations of mass consumer cosmetics, a fate that his wallet would likely never forgive him for.

Though as his wife exited the bathroom with the light makeup that she'd learned to put on just yesterday, he felt maybe it wasn't _too _bad. Unbelievably it made her look even more gorgeous than normal!

"Shall we go?" Yelana asked, smiling in a pleased way that showed she knew just what kind of effect she was having on him.

"Of course, darling." Terence said offering her his arm.

* * *

The next few days had been a whirlwind tour of Earth and many of its cultural sites made possible by the Transporter Nexus built under Singapore and its satellite Transporter stations worldwide. The off the beaten tracks attractions at least. After an aborted attempt at visiting the Wat Traimitr Witayaram Worawihan in Bangkok and Yelana getting uncomfortable with the large crowd of tourists, they'd learned to avoid the more popular sites. Despite that, it had been a wonderful experience for both of them as they enjoyed their taste of Earth's rich history and diverse cultures.

It was the last day of the trip however and the couple had decided to brave the tourist crowds once again to visit one of the world's newest attractions: Prehistoric Park, Pitcairn Islands.

Partially funded by the proceeds from a remake of the docu-fiction television mini-series of the same name and also substantial investment from the Chiropteran Swarm, the Park was a place where Earth's scientists engaged in the de-extinction of various flora and fauna. It offered scientists involved in the process the chance to practice and perfect the techniques involved, while building up public support for the de-extinction of species and, of course, earn its investors some money on the side

If what Terence had heard was correct, the eventual plan was to reintroduce some of the more recently extinct lifeforms back into suitable habitats on Earth, while the others would possibly be introduced to other planets as part of preserves that offered snapshots into Earth's distant past.

_And distort the development of those planets? I don't really understand where they're going with this to be honest._

Whatever the reasons behind it, Terence couldn't help but approve. Especially since the sight of various majestic creatures like Mammoths, Wooly Rhinos, Thylacines, Deinosuchus, Arthropleura, Meganeura and Pulmonoscorpius had had so enthralled Yelana.

"Your people are truly amazing Terence," Yelana said still awed by what she'd seen as they sat to have lunch in the Park's cafetaria. "To bring such animals back to life, some after millions of years! That's simply incredible."

"You'll have to thank the Asgard and Ancients actually. A lot of the DNA used to recreate these animals actually comes from their ecological surveys of Earth in the distant past."

"Maybe, but it's your people which brought them back. I doubt any other people in the universe would even consider doing something like this."

Terence shrugged.

"Thanks for the compliment, I guess?"

"You Tau'ri," Yelana chuckled. "Always so humble."

* * *

Lying in their bed on _Atlantis _a week later, Yelana still thought back fondly on their honeymoon bringing a smile to her lips.

"What's got you smiling, dear?" Terence asked as he ran his hand down her spine soothingly.

"Just thinking back on our honeymoon is all."

"Ah. It was pretty fantastic wasn't it?"

"Not as fantastic as you," Yelana said as she moved to straddle her husband, pushing the blanket that was the only thing covering her naked body aside in the process.

"You're ready for another round already?"

"You aren't?" Yelana asked coyly as her hands wrapped around her husband's tellingly erect member.

"For you, I'm always ready."

Smiling at his cheesy line, Yelana guided him inside her for another round of lovemaking that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done!
> 
> This is the last of my planned one shots so with this I'll be finished with this series for now. It's been a wild and fun ride that I hope you readers have enjoyed as well.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure what I'll be working on next but I'd like to think I've impressed some of you enough to see at least some of you in my next project whatever it'll be.
> 
> Till then, zàijiàn!


End file.
